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Neville Cardus
| 1,078,247,202 |
English writer (1888–1975)
|
[
"1888 births",
"1975 deaths",
"Classical music critics",
"Commanders of the Order of the British Empire",
"Cricket historians and writers",
"English male journalists",
"English music critics",
"English sportswriters",
"English writers about music",
"Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music",
"Knights Bachelor",
"People from Rusholme",
"Recipients of the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class",
"The Guardian journalists",
"The Herald (Melbourne) people"
] |
Sir John Frederick Neville Cardus, CBE (2 April 1888 – 28 February 1975) was an English writer and critic. From an impoverished home background, and mainly self-educated, he became The Manchester Guardian's cricket correspondent in 1919 and its chief music critic in 1927, holding the two posts simultaneously until 1940. His contributions to these two distinct fields in the years before the Second World War established his reputation as one of the foremost critics of his generation.
Cardus's approach to cricket writing was innovative, turning what had previously been largely a factual form into vivid description and criticism; he is considered by contemporaries to have influenced every subsequent cricket writer. Although he achieved his largest readership for his cricket reports and books, he considered music criticism as his principal vocation. Without any formal musical training, he was initially influenced by the older generation of critics, in particular Samuel Langford and Ernest Newman, but developed his own individual style of criticism—subjective, romantic and personal, in contrast to the objective analysis practised by Newman. Cardus's opinions and judgments were often forthright and unsparing, which sometimes caused friction with leading performers. Nevertheless, his personal charm and gregarious manner enabled him to form lasting friendships in the cricketing and musical worlds, with among others Newman, Sir Thomas Beecham and Sir Donald Bradman.
Cardus spent the Second World War years in Australia, where he wrote for The Sydney Morning Herald and gave regular radio talks. He also wrote books on music, and completed his autobiography. After his return to England he resumed his connection with The Manchester Guardian as its London music critic. He continued to write on cricket, and produced books on both his specialisms. Cardus's work was publicly recognised by his appointment as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1964 and the award of a knighthood in 1967, while the music and cricket worlds acknowledged him with numerous honours. In his last years, he became a guru and inspirational figure to aspiring young writers.
## Early life
### Family background and early childhood
Neville Cardus was born on 2 April 1888 in Rusholme, Manchester. Throughout his childhood and young adulthood he was known as "Fred". There has been confusion over his birth date. The birthdate of 2 April 1888 is as given on his baptism record; and it is 2 April when he celebrated his birthday, albeit believing that he was born in 1889: Cardus himself hosted a dinner party on 2 April 1959 believing this to be his 70th birthday. His birth certificate shows a birthdate of 3 April 1888, but this has been argued to be incorrect, since the date of registration of 15 May 1888 was such that using the birth date of 2 April would have breached the requirement to register a birth in no more than 42 days. Some sources give the birthdate as 2 April 1889, Neville's mother was Ada Cardus, one of six daughters of Robert and Ann Cardus of 4 Summer Place, Rusholme. On 14 July 1888, when the baby was three months old, Ada married Neville's father, John Frederick Newsham, a blacksmith. Cardus's autobiographical works refer to his father as a violinist in an orchestra, but there is no other evidence for this. Four days after the wedding, Cardus's father left by boat for America, with the intention that Ada followed. However, Ada changed her mind and went to live with Eliahoo Joseph, a Turkish merchant and possibly a pimp, with Ada a prostitute. John Frederick Newsham returned to England and divorced Ada in 1899. It was said that within a few years Ada and Neville had returned to her parents' home in Summer Place.
Robert Cardus was a retired policeman; Neville referred to him as receiving a small pension, although a search of police archives found no trace of this. The family took in neighbours' washing, and the household income was further supplemented by his daughters' earnings from part-time prostitution. In his autobiographical writings, Cardus refers to his home environment at Summer Place as "sordid ... unlettered and unbeautiful", yet enlivened by laughter: "Humour kept breezing in". Commentators have suggested that Cardus tended to overstate the deprived aspects of his childhood; his biographer Christopher Brookes asserts that "Cardus was the product neither of a slum, nor a cultural desert". Robert Cardus, though uneducated, was not illiterate, and was instrumental in awakening his grandson's literary interests. Theatres, libraries and other cultural facilities were easily accessible from the Cardus home.
Neville described his formal schooling as limited to five years at the local board school, where the curriculum was basic and the methods of tuition harsh: "[T]he boy who showed the faintest sign of freedom of the will was caned". There is, however, doubt as to whether his schooling lasted only five years and whether he attended a board school or a Church of England school. The experience did not curb Neville's intellectual curiosity; at a very young age he was expanding his cultural horizons, through the worlds of reading and of music hall and pantomime. When he was 10 years old he discovered the novels of Dickens; years later he wrote that there were two classes of person, "those who have it in them from birth onwards to appreciate Dickens and those who haven't. The second group should be avoided as soon as detected". His earliest creative writing took the form of a handwritten magazine, The Boy's World, full of articles and stories he had written. He circulated it among his schoolmates, until it was discovered and torn up by an irate teacher.
### Manchester, 1901–12
After Robert Cardus's death in 1900 the family moved several times, eventually breaking up altogether. Cardus left school in 1901 and took a variety of short-term, unskilled jobs before finding more secure employment as a clerk with Flemings' marine insurance agency. He lived for a time with his Aunt Beatrice with whom, according to Brookes, he had at an early age "embarked on a lifelong love affair ... In his eyes she could do no wrong". A flamboyant character, Beatrice brought colour into Cardus's life; she encouraged him to read worthwhile books and her memory, Brookes asserts, "remained a potent inspirational force" throughout his later life as a writer. She also bought him his first cricket bat.
These years were a period of intense self-education. Cardus became an habitué of the local libraries, and extended his reading from Dickens to include many of the masters of literature: Fielding, Thackeray, Conrad and—with more reservation—Hardy and Henry James. In due course he added philosophy and metaphysics to his curriculum; this began with his discovery of George Henry Lewes, which led him on to the works of Kant, Hume, Berkeley and, eventually, Schopenhauer. He supplemented these studies by attending free lectures at Manchester University, and met regularly with a group of like-minded autodidacts at Alexandra Park or, in the winter, at the Lyons café in Albert Square, to discuss and debate for whole afternoons. At first Cardus's schedule of self-improvement was random; eventually he compiled what he called a "cultural scheme" whereby he devoted a set weekly number of hours to different subjects.
Cardus's interest in music began with the popular tunes sung by his mother and her sisters in the family home. He remembered hearing for the first time the melody of the "Vilja" song from Franz Lehár's operetta The Merry Widow, which "curled its way into my heart to stay there for a lifetime". In April 1907 he was "swept ... into the seven seas of music" by a performance of Edward German's operetta Tom Jones. "I am unable to explain", Cardus wrote many years later, "why it should have been left to Edward German—of all composers—to release the flood". He began going to the Hallé Orchestra's concerts at the Free Trade Hall where, on 3 December 1908, he was present at the premiere of Elgar's first symphony, under Hans Richter. He regularly attended the fortnightly concerts at the Royal Manchester College of Music, where students' performances were assessed by the principal, Adolph Brodsky. As part of his scheme of study, Cardus briefly took singing lessons, his only formal instruction in music. In 1916 Cardus published his first musical article, "Bantock and Style in Music", in Musical Opinion.
Alongside his intellectual pursuits Cardus played and followed cricket. As a small boy he had begun to visit Old Trafford Cricket Ground to watch Lancashire matches: "The first cricketer I saw was A.C. MacLaren ... I can still see the swing of MacLaren's bat, the great follow-through finishing high and held there with the body poised". In 1902 he saw the Test match against Australia in which Victor Trumper scored a century before lunch and thereby won a permanent place among Cardus's heroes. Cardus first played cricket on rough waste land close to his home in Rusholme; as he matured he developed as an effective medium-paced off break bowler, and for several seasons from 1908 onwards he played as a weekend professional in Manchester league cricket. "I am not ashamed to confess that I seldom hesitated, as soon as a batsman came to the crease, to let him have a quick one bang in the penis; after which a quick, simple straight one would invariably remove him from the scene".
## Shrewsbury
In the spring of 1912, in search of a change from his unrewarding clerical job, Cardus applied for the post of assistant cricket coach at Shrewsbury School, citing his bowling averages in Manchester club cricket. He reasoned that, by living frugally during the Shrewsbury summers, he would be able to finance his winter studies of music and literature. His application was successful, and in May 1912 he began his duties. He worked initially under Walter Attewell, a former Nottinghamshire professional, and later under the Yorkshire and England cricketer Ted Wainwright. Cardus established good working relations with both of these, but identified most closely with Cyril Alington, the school's headmaster: "Because of Alington I call myself ... an old Salopian". Alington first detected Cardus's intellectual potential when he found him reading a copy of Gilbert Murray's translation of Euripides's drama Medea. In August 1914, in addition to his cricketing duties he became Alington's secretary, after the previous incumbent joined the army at the outbreak of war; Cardus was rejected for military service because of his poor eyesight.
Cardus did not find his duties at Shrewsbury onerous. He made frequent trips to Manchester, for Hallé concerts or to watch Thomas Beecham conduct at the Manchester Opera House. He found time for other work; thus, in the winter of 1913–14, he was the music critic for the northern edition of The Daily Citizen. This short-lived newspaper was an official organ of the early Labour Party; mainly out of admiration for Bernard Shaw Cardus had joined the Independent Labour Party, but quickly lost interest in socialism: "Their creed or system was obviously not to be a means to an end but an end in itself". According to Brookes, the influence of Shrewsbury School affected Cardus to the extent that "[t]he playing fields of an English public school were for him a more natural setting than the iconoclastic frenzy of the Lyons café where socialism vied with Richard Strauss for pride of place in the race to modernity". The Daily Citizen paid poorly, and Cardus's association with it ended in April 1914.
Cardus spent his winters in Manchester, studying hard in anticipation of any opportunity for an opening as a music critic, eking out his summer savings by taking temporary clerical work. Around 1916 he met Edith King, an art teacher and amateur actress who became a regular attender at the Lyons café meetings. In the summers, when Cardus returned to Shrewsbury, she kept him informed of musical and cultural events in Manchester. The Shrewsbury years, which Brookes describes as a "magical interlude", ended suddenly when, at the end of the 1916 summer, Alington was appointed headmaster of Eton. Initially it seemed likely that Cardus would join him there as his secretary, but Cardus's military exemption was under review; the uncertainty of his position ended the possibility of a post at Eton. He left Shrewsbury in September 1916 with little money, and no immediate prospects of regular work.
## Manchester Guardian, 1917–1940
### First years
In the winter of 1916–17 Cardus continued his private studies while working intermittently; among various jobs, he collected insurance premiums for a burial society. Early in January 1917 he wrote to C. P. Scott, The Manchester Guardian's editor, asking for any available post at the paper, as "the means whereby to continue my education". To bolster his chances he enclosed specimens of his writing. The result was, first, a temporary unpaid position as Scott's secretary, but in mid-March Scott offered a job on the paper's reporting staff. The writer J. B. Priestley later asserted that Cardus, who did not know shorthand, was engaged not as a reporter, but as a "writer". In Cardus's own account of these years he appears to have been fully engaged in reporters' duties, his lack of shorthand being dismissed by the chief reporter, Haslam Mills, who paraphrased Shakespeare: "Some men are born to shorthand, others achieve shorthand, while others have shorthand thrust upon them". Mills advised Cardus to concentrate on style: "We can be decorative at times; we can even be amusing. Here, possibly, you will find scope".
Within a year Cardus had been moved from the reporters' room to take charge of the paper's "Miscellany" column. He also resumed the duties of part-time secretary to Scott, who was at this time over 70, and had edited The Manchester Guardian since 1872. Despite his years, he struck Cardus as "of inexhaustible energy and aliveness". Scott was a demanding employer, who gave his young writers free rein, but expected in return long hours and total dedication. Driven hard, sometimes to the point of exhaustion, Cardus nevertheless relished these years, and never complained to Scott of weariness. Early in 1919 his role changed again, when he was made junior drama critic under the direction of C.E. Montague, the paper's principal theatre critic who had returned from war service with no great desire to continue in the role. Cardus's principal ambitions still lay in the direction of music criticism, though he recognised that this door was closed while Samuel Langford, music critic since 1906, remained in post. In preparation for any opportunity that might arise in that direction, Cardus maintained a daily two-hour study of music or music literature.
### Cricket correspondent
In the spring of 1919, while recovering from a serious pulmonary condition, Cardus took up a suggestion from his news editor, William Percival Crozier, that he should watch some cricket at Old Trafford and, if he felt able, write reports on a few matches. He had earlier written four articles on cricket for the newspaper. On 19 May 1919 Cardus went to the first day of Lancashire's match with Derbyshire. His first published cricket report, on the following day, showed little sign of his later characteristic style: "I simply had no intention of writing on cricket for any length of time; this was a spare-time affair ... and I fitted myself into the idioms and procedures of the sporting writers of 1919". Scott nonetheless saw a potential, and from the beginning of 1920 Cardus became the paper's regular cricket correspondent, under the by-line "Cricketer", a position he held for 20 years.
Cardus's emergence as cricket correspondent was concurrent with another appointment, that of deputy and successor designate to Langford as music critic. In January 1920 Cardus reported on two recitals by the Russian tenor Vladimir Rosing, and apparently impressed Scott with the quality of his notice, although the accuracy of Cardus's summary of events has been questioned. With the succession to Langford assured, and a significant increase in salary, Cardus was happy to devote his summers exclusively to cricket. He remained circumspect about his commitment to the sport: "Never have I regarded my cricket as more than a means to an end; that end being always music". Nevertheless, he developed a style of cricket reporting that quickly lifted him to the forefront of contemporary sports writers. He did this, according to his fellow cricket writer Gerald Howat, by using imagery and metaphor to create "a mythology of characters and scenes". John Arlott described Cardus as "the creat[or] of modern cricket writing".
The new sense of financial and professional security was probably instrumental in the decision of Cardus and Edith King to marry, on 17 June 1921. The marriage, which lasted until Edith's death 47 years later, was unconventional; the couple led individual lives and rarely lived together, while remaining devoted friends. Cardus described his wife as "a great spirit and character, born for sisterhood not marriage." From this time onward, Cardus used the forename "Neville" in place of "Fred", and adopted the initials "N.C." for his music reviews, to distinguish this persona from "Cricketer". In August 1921 Cardus gained what he termed "the only scoop of my career", when he reported the unexpected victory by 28 runs of MacLaren's scratch side over the previously unbeaten Australian touring team. The match, at The Saffrons ground at Eastbourne, had attracted little interest from other cricket correspondents, being treated as a foregone conclusion.
The focus of much of Cardus's cricket writing was the Lancashire side of the inter-war years, and in particular their twice-yearly battles with rivals Yorkshire. His eye was as much on the players and their personalities as on the game, on "the match within the match", with the actual scores treated as secondary. Cardus justified this: "Do I add up the notes of a Mozart "Vivace" to evaluate the music?" To meet Cardus's requirements, the players were sometimes "enlarged", notably Emmott Robinson, the veteran Yorkshire all-rounder of the 1920s who through Cardus's pen became "the apotheosis of Yorkshire cricket and Yorkshire character". In the 1930s, Cardus's style became less effusive, as his older heroes were replaced by players with, in his view, less romantic appeal. Bradman was an exception; after his exploits in the England versus Australia Test series of 1930 Cardus described the Australian as "an incredible exponent who in himself sums up all the skill and experience that have gone before him ... he has kindled grand bonfires of batsmanship for us".
Selections from Cardus's Manchester Guardian cricket writings were published in a series of books between 1922 and 1937. Because of financial constraints the paper did not send "Cricketer" to Australia to cover the "Bodyline" tour of 1932–33. Cardus was generally approving of Jardine's controversial bodyline tactics, writing on 5 March 1933: "[H]ad [Jardine] been a weak man, all the energy of Larwood [England's premier bowler] might have proved as vain a thing as it did in 1930". In 1936–37, Cardus accompanied the MCC team to Australia; otherwise he continued to write on English domestic cricket until the 1939 season was summarily truncated. On 1 September, the day that Germany invaded Poland, Cardus observed the removal of the bust of W. G. Grace from the Lord's pavilion; he was informed by a bystander: "That means war". It has been argued that this should be regarded as a good story rather than literal truth: there was no match at Lord's that day, and Cardus was on holiday in Derbyshire.
### Music critic
Following Langford's death in May 1927, Cardus became The Manchester Guardian's chief music critic. For several years he had worked closely with Langford, whose influence on the younger man was equalled only by that of Ernest Newman, Langford's predecessor as the paper's music critic: "Langford taught me to feel and translate, while Newman taught me to observe and analyse". Cardus's fellow-critic Hugo Cole has described his approach as personal rather than academic, based on his own reactions to the music he was hearing, and with a complete independence of judgement. Cardus was, Cole says, "the last distinguished music critic never to have received formal musical training ... he was a writer first, and a music critic second".
Cardus's lack of deference sometimes led to friction, as with Hamilton Harty, chief conductor of the Hallé Orchestra from 1920. In his reviews of the Hallé concerts until Harty's departure in 1933, Cardus frequently criticised the conductor's choices and interpretations. On one occasion he observed that Harty's rendering of the adagio in Beethoven's Ninth had broken the world record for slowness, and quoted minutes and seconds. Responding to Harty's outraged protests, Cardus threatened to bring an alarm clock to the next performance, "less for critical purposes than for those of personal convenience". When Harty left, he was not replaced as chief conductor; the Hallé employed distinguished visiting conductors such as Beecham, Malcolm Sargent, Pierre Monteux, Adrian Boult and Ernest Ansermet. Cardus considered that a lack of central direction was adversely affecting the orchestra, and his biting criticisms of some performances led to temporarily strained relations.
Cardus often expressed views contrary to popular and critical opinion. He dismissed Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring as "a sophisticated exploitation of primitive rum-ti-tum". When Harty introduced Gershwin's symphonic poem An American in Paris into a Hallé concert, Cardus proposed "a 150 per cent [import] tariff against this sort of American dry-goods". He professed to think that Sullivan's "preoccupation with comic opera, to the neglect of oratorio and symphony" was a "deplorable" loss to English music, although he also wrote that without Gilbert, nothing of Sullivan's music would have survived. Cardus championed Delius against the consensus of his fellow-critics: "His music looks back on days intensely lived through; it knows the pathos of mortal things doomed to fade and vanish". At the 1929 Delius Festival in London, Cardus briefly met the composer, who thought he looked too young to be The Manchester Guardian's music critic, and counselled him: "Don't read yourself daft. Trust to y'r emotions". Also against the grain of critical opinion, Cardus commended the then unfashionable music of Richard Strauss and Anton Bruckner.
In 1931 Cardus visited the Salzburg Festival, where he met Beecham and began a friendship which lasted until Sir Thomas's death in 1961—despite numerous disagreements. One of Cardus's notices in 1937 so incensed Beecham that he announced he would not conduct any concert at which Cardus was present. Cardus later numbered Beecham, with Elgar and Delius, as "one of the three most original spirits known in English music since Purcell". The annual Salzburg Festival became a highlight of Cardus's musical calendar; in 1936 he saw Toscanini conduct a performance there of Wagner's Die Meistersinger that, he said, "will remain in the mind for a lifetime ... Toscanini held us like children listening to a tale told in the chimney corner, lighted by the glow of olden times". Cardus's final prewar Salzburg visit was in 1938, just after the German-Austrian Anschluss which led to the withdrawal in protest of many of the Festival's leading figures.
Despite financial incentives from London newspapers, Cardus remained loyal to The Manchester Guardian. On the outbreak of war in September 1939 the Free Trade Hall closed, requisitioned for military purposes. The Hallé Society left Manchester to tour with Sargent around the north-west of England. With no music in Manchester and all first-class cricket suspended, Cardus was unemployed, "imprisoned in Manchester, useless to anybody". Thus, when he received an offer from Sir Keith Murdoch to join The Herald of Melbourne in Australia, he accepted immediately.
## Australia
Cardus had been known to Australian readers since the 1920s, when The Argus in Melbourne reported his view that Australians made cricket "a war game ... with an intensity of purpose too deadly for a mere game." His books on cricket were widely reviewed in the Australian press in the 1920s and 30s; one critic commented in 1929, "Mr. Cardus mingles fancy with fact. The latter is preferable." Another Australian writer, quoting him extensively in 1932, observed, "Mr. Cardus is a gifted writer and a most impartial critic." By 1936 he was known to a considerable section of the Australian public as a cricket writer, although he was hardly known there in his musical capacity.
The 1936–37 MCC tour of Australia under G.O. Allen was the occasion of Cardus's first visit to the country. During the tour he made, or consolidated, friendships with players and colleagues including C. B. Fry and Donald Bradman. Fry, a former England cricket captain, was a boyhood hero of Cardus, and was covering the Tests for the London Evening Standard. In Bradman, Cardus found a sophistication and sensitivity that other writers had failed to detect. When interviewed on his arrival in Australia, Cardus speculated how he would cope for the six months of the tour without music; he was touched when the following day music students in Perth gave him a private recital of music by Chopin and Hugo Wolf. During this tour Cardus wrote for The Herald in Melbourne, and broadcast about cricket on Australian radio.
Cardus made a private visit to Australia from mid-January to mid-March 1938. When he joined The Herald in 1940, his initial brief was to cover a series of concerts conducted by Beecham for the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). Daily contact between the two men during Beecham's time in Australia between June and October 1940 helped to consolidate their friendship. At the end of his tour Beecham tried to persuade Cardus to join him in sailing to America, asking, "Do you propose to stay in this barbarous country all your life?" Cardus insisted on remaining in Australia, but moved from Melbourne to Sydney. Concluding that he could not satisfactorily review concerts for an evening newspaper, he joined the staff of The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH).
At first Cardus failed to adjust his expectations to the prevailing standard of music-making in Australia, which was not at that time comparable to the best on offer in Europe or America. He was accused of being "just one more sneering Pommy bastard come to hand down higher wisdom to the ignorant colonials." His biographer Christopher Brookes suggests that Cardus was applying critical standards "more appropriate to Salzburg than to Sydney". Over the next two years Cardus and the public slowly came to terms with each other, and by 1942 he was both popular and respected among Australians.
For ABC Cardus presented a weekly hour-long programme, "The Enjoyment of Music", which enlarged the audience for classical music across the country. His topics included concert works, such as the late Beethoven string quartets and Mahler's Ninth Symphony, operas including The Marriage of Figaro and Der Rosenkavalier, and performers such as Wilhelm Furtwängler and Arturo Toscanini. He also gave a weekly, fifteen-minute talk on music, illustrated by records, for the children's Argonauts Club programme and regularly wrote for ABC Weekly.
Cardus rented a small flat in the Kings Cross district of Sydney, where he wrote his Ten Composers (1945) and Autobiography (1947). He said later that he found the discipline of writing for seven hours a day difficult at first, but that the process had turned him from a journalist into something more substantial. After his wife announced her intention of sailing from England in 1941 to join him, Cardus declined to move to a larger flat to accommodate them both, and rented a separate establishment for her a mile away. They dined together once a week, but otherwise continued to lead largely separate lives.
By the end of the war Cardus's thoughts were turning to England. Refusing an offer of a highly paid permanent contract to cover both music and cricket for the SMH he considered his options; with some reluctance he agreed to cover the MCC's 1946–47 tour of Australia for the SMH and also for The Times and The Manchester Guardian. The novelist Charles Morgan wrote of Cardus's reports, "the best [I have] read these 40 years. Who shall dare to say now that George Meredith is forgotten?"
## Later career
### Years of uncertainty
In April 1947 Cardus returned to England. He had not as yet decided to leave Australia permanently, but "felt in need of spiritual refreshment". He found a war-weary England in which much had changed; familiar landmarks had disappeared, and old friends and acquaintances had died. The Free Trade Hall was a burnt-out shell, and the Queen's Hall in London completely destroyed; however, Cardus was struck by the apparent good health of the English music scene. He also found an undamaged Lord's, and enjoyed a season of magnificent cricket, marked by the batting exploits of the Middlesex pair, Denis Compton and Bill Edrich. Cardus was back in Sydney by the end of the year, but early in 1948, having accepted an offer from The Sunday Times to cover that year's Test series against Australia, he left for England again.
Another factor that brought Cardus to England in 1948 was the prospect of succeeding Newman, whose retirement as chief music critic of The Sunday Times was assumed to be imminent. However, Newman had no intention of retiring, and made it clear that he would resent any successor-designate looking over his shoulder. Feeling slighted, Cardus resigned from the paper and accepted an offer from the London Evening Standard to be its music critic. This new appointment was short-lived; Cardus's lengthy and discursive concert reviews were incompatible with this paper's style, and were ruthlessly cut by subeditors. At the end of 1948 he was back in Australia, proclaiming his intention to settle there permanently. This determination, too, was brief; the lure of London life proved irresistible. Because of the commercial success of his Autobiography, published in 1947, and the immediate commissioning of a second autobiographical work, Cardus was not under immediate financial pressure. He left Australia again in the spring of 1949, and although he spent the English winter of 1950–51 in Australia, writing about the 1950–51 England v. Australia Test series for the Sydney Morning Herald, London was thereafter his permanent home. Here he worked as a freelance writer, in which role he resumed his association with The Manchester Guardian. In December 1951 he was appointed the paper's London music critic, on a permanent salaried basis.
### London critic
In 1949 Cardus set up his London home at the National Liberal Club, while Edith took a flat in Bickenhall Mansions, just off Baker Street. The pair lived harmoniously apart, though in frequent contact, until Edith's death. Cardus found London's musical life invigorating, with five major orchestras and a host of distinguished conductors and solo artists performing regularly. Toscanini paid his final visit to England in 1952, with two concerts at the Royal Festival Hall. Outside London, Cardus was a regular visitor to the Edinburgh Festival and to Glyndebourne, and was in Manchester for the reopening of the Free Trade Hall and the "homecoming" of the Hallé Orchestra in November 1951. The inaugural concert concluded with Kathleen Ferrier singing "Land of Hope and Glory". Cardus had first heard Ferrier at the Edinburgh Festival in 1947; he became a devoted admirer to the extent that, eventually, questions were raised about his critical blindness to her technical weaknesses. He wrote of her singing that it was, "like the woman herself ... imbued with a quiet but reliant sense and a feeling for the fun and goodness of life". He was devastated by her death from cancer in October 1953; the following year he edited and contributed to a memorial volume of tributes.
For The Manchester Guardian, Cardus wrote around 30 music articles a year. These included "survey" pieces, which often reflected his personal enthusiasms; a regular subject was the music of Gustav Mahler, who in the early 1950s was by no means a popular composer with British audiences. Cardus sought to change that, with a series of articles between 1952 and 1957 under titles such as "Mahler's Growing Influence", "Misunderstanding Mahler", and "The Mahler Problem". He wrote the first volume of a detailed analysis entitled Gustav Mahler: His Mind and his Music; the book, dealing with Mahler's first five symphonies, was published in 1965, but was poorly received by critics. Volume II was never written.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Cardus wrote cricket articles; these included an annual reflection for Wisden Cricketers' Almanack and occasional columns for The Manchester Guardian, for whom he covered the 1953 Test Matches against Australia. In the English winter of 1954–55 Cardus made his final visit to Australia, to report on the Test series for The Sydney Morning Herald; he undertook to write "impressions" rather than day-to-day reports on play. He found time to enjoy Sydney's theatrical and music scene, but was disappointed in what he perceived as a decline in the city's musical standards.
In the decades after the war many of Cardus's earlier heroes and acquaintances died. On Fry's death in 1956 Cardus wrote of him as "A great Englishman, measured by any standards of occupation, art and civilisation". In 1959, still in harness, Newman died at the age of 90; Cardus considered him the most outstanding of all music critics, and thought he should have been appointed a Companion of Honour (CH), or even to the Order of Merit. Beecham died on 8 March 1961. Cardus had for some years noted a decline in his old friend's powers, though he had written in 1954, on the occasion of Beecham's 75th birthday, of the debt the music world owed to the conductor: "He led us out of the Teutonic captivity. He showed us other and more sensitive worlds". After Beecham's death, Cardus organised the publication of a celebratory memoir, as he had done with Kathleen Ferrier. To an extent the departed idols were replaced with new heroes: in music, Herbert von Karajan, Otto Klemperer, Clifford Curzon and Claudio Arrau; in cricket, Keith Miller and Garfield Sobers. Cardus maintained a keen antagonism towards much of contemporary music; discussing Pierre Boulez's Pli selon pli after a performance in 1965, he said he "could not relate the varied succession of aural phenomena to music as my musical intelligence and senses recognise music".
In 1964 Cardus was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). In a letter to his friend Marjorie Robinson he described the investiture at Buckingham Palace, remarking that the Queen "might have been any nice shy young lady in D.H. Evans or Kendal Milnes". Just over two years later Cardus was awarded a knighthood, the first music critic to receive such an honour, although in all likelihood it was awarded as much for his cricket writing. Years previously Beecham had advised: "In the unlikely event of you being offered a knighthood, Neville, take it. It makes tables at the Savoy so much easier to come by".
### Final years
Edith Cardus died on 26 March 1968. Despite their separate day-to-day lives, she had been an influential presence for nearly all Cardus's adult life; they had communicated by telephone almost daily, and he felt her loss keenly. After her death he left the National Liberal Club and moved into her flat, which remained his base for the rest of his life. In the ensuing months he worried about his deteriorating relationship with The Guardian; the paper had been renamed in 1959 following reorganisation, and its editorial offices had moved to London in 1964. Cardus felt that much of the old ethos had departed, and that his once-sacrosanct copy was now at the mercy of subeditors. He was particularly incensed by the treatment meted out to his 1969 Edinburgh Festival reports, and referred to the subeditors' room as "the Abattoir" in one of many letters complaining of editorial butchery.
As well as his work for The Guardian Cardus wrote occasionally for The Sunday Times, a particular pleasure to him in view of his failure to achieve Newman's post. In 1970 he published Full Score, the last of his autobiographical works and, in Daniels's view, the least substantial of all the Cardus books. In his eighties, Cardus assumed the role of guru to young aspiring writers, before whom he would hold court in favourite locations: the Garrick Club, the National Liberal Club, or Lord's. According to Daniels, Cardus "thrived in the role of patron, encourager, [and] accoucheur". Howat describes his appearance in these years as not having changed much from his younger days: "... the lean, ascetic figure of moderate height, with sharp features, sleek hair, and strong glasses".
Cardus died on 28 February 1975 at the Nuffield Clinic, London, a few days after collapsing at home. His cremation service was private. On 4 April more than 200 people attended a memorial service at St Paul's, Covent Garden. These included representatives from Cardus's worlds of cricket, journalism and music. Flora Robson and Wendy Hiller gave readings, and Clifford Curzon, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, played the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23. The eulogy was given by the cricket writer and historian Alan Gibson, who took as his text verses from Blake's Auguries of Innocence:
> > Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine; Under every grief and pine Runs a thread of silken twine.
## Reputation, honours and influence
Cardus's contribution to cricket writing has been acknowledged by various commentators on the game. John Arlott wrote: "Before him, cricket was reported ... with him it was for the first time appreciated, felt, and imaginatively described." Howat commented: "He would have his imitators and parodists, and no serious cricket writer would remain unaffected by him". His influence on his successors was more specifically acknowledged by Gibson:
> "All cricket writers of the last half century have been influenced by Cardus, whether they admit it or not, whether they have wished to be or not, whether they have tried to copy him or tried to avoid copying him. He was not a model, any more than Macaulay, say, was a model for the aspiring historian. But just as Macaulay changed the course of the writing of history, Cardus changed the course of the writing of cricket. He showed what could be done. He dignified and illuminated the craft".
As a music critic, Cardus's romantic, instinctive approach was the opposite of Newman's objective school of musical criticism. Initially in awe of Newman's reputation, Cardus soon discovered his own independent, more subjective voice. A fellow critic wrote that Newman "probed into Music's vitals, put her head under deep X-ray and analysed cell-tissue. Cardus laid his head against her bosom and listened to the beating of her heart." Despite their different approaches, the two writers held each other in considerable regard; at times, Newman's own prose showed the influence of Cardus's style. Among leading musicians who have paid tribute to Cardus, Yehudi Menuhin wrote that he "reminds us that there is an understanding of the heart as well as of the mind ... in Neville Cardus, the artist has an ally". Colin Davis highlighted "the quality and verve of Cardus's writing", which had made him a household name.
Beside his CBE and knighthood, Cardus received numerous honours from the musical and cricketing worlds, at home and overseas. In 1963 he was awarded the City of Bayreuth's Wagner Medal; he was given honorary membership of the Royal Manchester College of Music in 1968, and of the Royal Academy of Music in 1972. The Hallé Orchestra honoured him with two special concerts in April 1966 to mark his long association with the orchestra. In 1970 he received the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class. Among the honours he most valued was the presidency, for two years, of Lancashire County Cricket Club, which he accepted in 1971.
Cardus was not an "establishment" figure. His friends encountered initial resistance when they sought his election to the MCC, although he was eventually accepted in 1958. He was denied the civic honour of the Freedom of the City of Manchester, and although he made light of this omission he was hurt by it. Long after his death, the city named a pathway close to the rebuilt Summer Place "Neville Cardus Walk". Aside from formal institutional recognition, Cardus was highly regarded by prominent individual cricketers and musicians, as indicated by the "tribute book" he received at his 70th birthday celebration lunch. The book included contributions from Wilfred Rhodes, Jack Hobbs and Len Hutton, and also from Klemperer, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Bruno Walter. He managed to maintain close friendships with both Beecham and Sir John Barbirolli, though the two conductors cordially disliked one another.
In the conventional sense, Cardus was not a religious man; Dennis Silk, a one-time MCC president, suggests that Cardus's religion was "friendship". In Autobiography Cardus says he found his Kingdom of Heaven in the arts, "the only religion that is real and, once found, omnipresent"—though his rationalism was shaken, he confesses, when he came to understand the late string quartets of Beethoven. He ends his autobiography by declaring: "If I know that my Redeemer liveth it is not on the church's testimony, but because of what Handel affirms".
Within the relaxed framework of his marriage, Cardus enjoyed relationships with many women. These included Hilda "Barbe" Ede, with whom he shared a passionate affair in the 1930s before her sudden death in 1937; Cardus referred to her as "Milady", and devoted a chapter of Full Score to her. After his return from Australia his closest women friends were Margaret Hughes and Else Mayer-Lismann, to whom he referred respectively as his "cricket wife" and his "music wife". Hughes, who was more than 30 years younger than Cardus, became his literary executor after his death, and edited several collections of his cricketing and musical writings.
## Books by Cardus
The list includes all original works together with collections, anthologies and books edited or jointly edited by Cardus. Posthumous publications are included. Publication year relates to the original edition; many of the books have been reissued, often by different publishers.
### Autobiographical works
- A condensed edition of Autobiography and Second Innings
### Music books
- (Chapters on Schubert, Wagner, Brahms, Mahler, Richard Strauss, César Franck, Debussy, Elgar, Delius and Sibelius)
- (A memorial volume, edited by Cardus, with additional contributions by Winifred Ferrier, Sir John Barbirolli, Benjamin Britten, Roy Henderson, Gerald Moore and Bruno Walter)
- (A revised version of Ten Composers, with an additional chapter on Bruckner)
### Cricket books
### General anthology
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Prison education
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Educational activities inside prisons
|
[
"Education",
"Penology"
] |
Prison education is any educational activity that occurs inside prison. Courses can include basic literacy programmes, secondary school equivalency programmes, vocational education, and tertiary education. Other activities such as rehabilitation programs, physical education, and arts and crafts programmes may also be considered a form of prison education. Programmes are typically provided, managed, and funded by the prison system, though inmates may be required to pay for distance education programmes. The history of and current practices in prison education vary greatly among countries.
Those entering prison systems worldwide have, on average, lower levels of education than the general population. Prison education often aims to make the inmate more employable after release. Administrating and attending educational programmes in prisons can be difficult. Staff and budget shortages, a lack of educational resources and computers, and the transfer of prisoners between facilities are common barriers. Prisoners may be reluctant to participate, often due to past educational failures or a lack of motivation.
Studies consistently show that education in prison is an effective way of reducing the rates of recidivism, which saves the expense of future prison sentences. In the United Kingdom, it is estimated that every pound spent on prison education saves taxpayers more than two pounds, and in the United States, the rate is four to five dollars saved for every dollar spent. Despite the benefits of prison education programmes, rates of education within prisons remain low in many countries, and attempts to increase funding for prison education have been opposed. Opponents argue that prison education is a waste of money and that prisoners are not deserving of the benefit.
## History
### Europe
The history and availability of prison education in Europe varies greatly between countries. Nordic countries have a long history of providing education to prisoners, and Sweden in particular is considered to be a pioneer in the field. Prison education became mandatory for inmates under 35 in 1842, and vocational education can be traced back to at least 1874, when the Uppsala County prison hired a carpenter to teach inmates woodworking. In Denmark, juvenile offenders have had access to education since the 1850s, and educational programmes became mandatory for them in 1930. Adult prisons have had educational programmes since 1866, and legislation requiring all inmates under the age of 30 to participate in educational courses was implemented in 1952. Norway opened its first prison to focus on education as a form of rehabilitation in 1851. By 1875, all eight prisons in the country were providing education to inmates, and by the end of the century, legislation was in effect ensuring that any prisoner who had not completed primary and lower secondary schooling should do so while in prison. As of 2007, every prison in Norway has a school for inmates. In Finland, legislation was adopted in 1866 which ensured that all prisoners would receive primary education, though the implementation of the order faced practical difficulties. A more successful education reform was implemented in 1899, which remained unchanged until 1975. However Iceland, which as of 2011 averaged only 137 prisoners in the country, only began implementing education programmes in 1971.
Between 1939 and 1975, while under the rule of Francisco Franco, prisons in Spain were infamous for their harsh conditions and levels of repression. Attitudes later softened, with the 1978 Constitution declaring that prisons should be oriented at re-education rather than forced labor. While university access existed, a 1992 Human Rights Watch report found that most prisons only offered basic education and some vocational training, and female inmates had less access to education than males. As of 2018, the National University of Distance Education is the only institution allowed to provide university education to inmates. In 1976, laws in Italy clarified that prisoners were entitled to university education. However, prisoners were unable to complete courses as correctional facilities neither provided entry for teachers, or leave for students to complete exams. Prisoners were only effectively allowed to study at university from 1986 when laws were relaxed, and further rights were enabled in 2000, greatly improving educational access. Many partnerships between prisons and universities were established between the early 2000s and mid 2010s.
The first significant development of prison education in England was Robert Peel's Parliamentary Gaol Act of 1823, which called for reading and writing classes in all prisons. While prison staff in the 1850s recognised the importance of basic literacy, they opposed giving prisoners any form of higher education on the grounds that education itself would not provide any "moral elevation". The Prison Act of 1877 is considered to have established the prison system that remained in effect until the 1990s, which only offered education of a "narrow and selective kind". In 1928, the majority of prisons in the UK were still only offering the most basic education courses. By 1958, while the number of educational staff in prisons had increased, there had been no other significant advancements in prison education. Education programmes did not improve until 1992, when the decision was made to outsource educational instruction on a competitive basis. More than 150 organizations applied, and by 1994, there were 45 educational providers across 125 prisons, providing various forms of education including secondary and tertiary.
Attempts to rehabilitate prisoners in Russia were made in 1819, possibly for the first time in the country's history. Reforms included instructing them in "piety and good morals", though this proved impossible due to the cramped conditions, extreme poverty and lack of other services. Instead, general improvements to conditions were first made, after which "religious and moral education" were gradually introduced. In 1918, it was recommended that children in Russian prisons should receive education alongside punishment. However, few educational programmes were implemented, because of the competing agendas of various jurisdictions and agencies. In the 1920s, efforts were made within the Gulag prison camps to eradicate illiteracy. Almost all the camps had classes on "political education", and some also had classes such as natural science, history of culture and foreign languages.
### North America
In the United States, prisoners were given religious instruction by chaplains in the early 19th century, and secular prison education programmes were first developed in order to help inmates to read Bibles and other religious texts. The first major education programme aimed at rehabilitating prisoners was launched in 1876. Zebulon Brockway, the superintendent of Elmira Reformatory in New York, was the initial person to implement such a programme. He believed prison education would "discipline the mind and fit it to receive ... the thoughts and principles that constitute their possessors good citizens". By 1900, the states of Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota had adopted the "Elmira system" of education, and by the 1930s, educational programmes could be found in most prisons. Tertiary education programmes did not appear until much later. In 1960, only nine states were offering college-level education to inmates; by 1983, such programmes were available in most states.
Support and availability of educational programmes has fluctuated in the US as policy has switched between focusing on rehabilitation and crime control. Between 1972 and 1995, inmates in the US were able to apply for Pell Grants, a subsidy programme run by the US federal government that provides funding for students. However, in 1994 Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which denied Pell Grants to anyone who is incarcerated. As a result, by 2005 only about a dozen prisons were offering post-secondary education, compared to 350 in the early 1990s; the number in New York dropped from 70 to 4. In 2015, President Barack Obama created a pilot programme that allowed a limited number of inmates to receive Pell grants. More than 200 colleges in 47 states subsequently expressed interest in running educational programmes for prisoners. The Pell ban was repealed in December 2020, reinstating eligibility for federal financial aid to thousands of incarcerated people in the US.
The development of prison education within Canada has paralleled that of the US. Royal Commissions in 1914 and 1936 both recommended that work programmes be replaced, at least to some extent, by rehabilitative programmes including education. However, education programmes did not become commonplace until the mid 1940s.
### Caribbean
A prison system in Barbados was established in 1945. Education programmes were officially introduced into it in 1956, and focused on basic literacy and numeracy, though female prisoners were not allowed to participate until the Prison Reform Act of 1961–66 was passed. Inmates over the age of 25 were not allowed to participate in programmes until 1990, when Barbados adopted the mandate of the World Conference on Education For All. The mandate also saw the offering of vocational and secondary education in the prison system. The Dominican Republic underwent a prison reform beginning in 2003, with basic literacy becoming compulsory at nearly half the country's 35 prisons; if inmates refuse to participate they were denied privileges such as visitation. As of 2012, 36 of the 268 prisoners at Najayo women's prison were completing university degrees in either law or psychology.
Outside access to, and information regarding the conditions of prisons in Cuba following its political revolution in the 1950s is limited. The government permitted limited access for some journalists in 2013, but it is unclear to what extent those facilities may have been representative of the country's prisons as a whole. Private interviews were not permitted, but officials highlighted the system's work and study programmes, including the teaching of skilled trades such as carpentry. According to one 1988 report by the Institute for Policy Studies, prisoners were provided with education up to a ninth grade level, inmates were provided with training in technical skills and as much as 85% of the population worked. Political reeducation also played a major role in Cuban penology.
### South America
Education opportunities in prison are considered to be generally poorer in South America in comparison to Europe and North America. Resources for education are comparatively lacking due to rising incarceration rates and prison overcrowding, partly a by-product of the war on drugs. Prison education programmes began in Argentina in the 1950s. Although details about programmes and their effectiveness is limited, the lack of available data is attributed to corruption within the prison system, alongside poor living conditions and high levels of violence. A law was enacted in 1996 ensuring all prisoners with less than the compulsory nine years of basic schooling be able to participate in educational programmes. Due to administrative constraints, on average only about 25% of eligible prisoners participated in these programmes as of 2010.
As of 2009, Brazil was considered to have one of the most progressive policies on prison education in South America. In 1984, the National Congress of Brazil passed a prison reform law, recognising inmates' right to education and other services, though the law has not been effectively implemented. As of 1998, some prisons were not offering education at all, while others only had "a fraction" of inmates studying; about 23% of inmates at São Paulo State Penitentiary were enrolled in some form of education; access to education was "more easily available" in female prisons. A 2002 report by the Federal Court of Accounts estimated that over 90% of the federal budget for prisons was spent on construction of new jails, and the funding for programmes including education "was not used [for] consistent policies but rather punctual and dispersed initiatives proposed by the states". As of 2004, it is estimated that less than 20% of Brazil's 400,000 inmates had access to education.
### Oceania
The first formal education programme to be implemented in the Australian state of New South Wales was at Darlinghurst Gaol in 1862, when a schoolmaster was hired to provide elementary and moral education to any prisoner who wished to attend. Prior to this one of the prisoners had been providing educational lessons to other inmates. By the early 1900s, basic literacy programmes were commonplace throughout Australian prisons, and by the 1950s, all major prisons in the country were offering some form of education and training programmes, though no more than 15 to 20% of inmates at any given prison could participate in educational programmes at one time.
The Senate Employment, Education and Training References Committee produced the Senate Report of the Inquiry into Education and Training in Correctional Facilities in 1996. The report stated that the history of prison education in Australia "could fairly be described as a disgrace", with non-existent or poor facilities containing deficient and out-dated curricula and resources. It made several recommendations on how to improve prison education, including the development of a national strategy. In 2001, a national strategy was launched, and by 2006, all states and territories were offering some form of tertiary education to inmates. Each state and territory, however, maintains control over its own prison education systems; there is no national system leading to differences in the way education is offered. For example, inmates in the Australian Capital Territory have been allowed to have laptop computers in their cells for educational purposes since 2006, though as of 2020 this is not available for inmates in New South Wales. Accordingly, certain educational and rehabilitation programmes that require a computer cannot be offered there.
According to the New Zealand Annual Review of Education, the availability and quality of prison education in the country decreased significantly between 1959 and 2005, as government policy shifted from prisons focusing on rehabilitation to prisons focusing on punishment. A 2005 Ombudsman's report stated there were "low levels of rehabilitative and productive activities" for prisoners in New Zealand.
### Asia
Prison education in Japan can be traced back to at least 1871, when practical ethics lectures were introduced into a prison in Tokyo. Reading and writing classes began being implemented into the prison system on a larger scale by 1881. By the late 1880s, it was believed that ethics classes were the most important form of education for prisoners, and by the 1890s, education was considered one of the most important issues of the prison system. In 1910, prison law in Japan ordered education be given to all juvenile inmates, and to any adult inmate deemed to have a need. Regulations stipulated two to four hours per day be set aside for education. In 1952, correspondence courses were introduced into all prisons, and in 1955, a high school was established at Matsumoto juvenile prison for juvenile inmates who had not completed their compulsory education. As of 2018, it is still the country's only high school in prison, and male prisoners nationwide can be transferred there on request.
Changes were made to the prison system in China in the 1920s, following the establishment of the Republic of China. Resulting from criticism of the lack of education for inmates at the time, there was a shift in the prison system away from religious and moral teaching, to intellectual education and hard labour as the primary means of rehabilitation. Authorities took considerable effort to develop an effective and diverse educational curriculum. As well as teaching literacy and arithmetic, classes also included music and composition, popular ethics, Confucianism and patriotic and political doctrine; the teaching of party doctrine increased significantly in the 1930s. In 1981, the People's Republic of China incorporated prison education into its national education programme, significantly increasing access for inmates.
In India, reports showing the need for prison education were being made as early as the 19th century, however, the country's prisons focused mostly on punitive measures. In 1983, while general and vocational programmes were in place, they were considered to be understaffed and underfunded, and the types of vocational training offered were outdated. Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) is considered to play a major role in prison education in India, becoming the country's first university to operate a study centre in prison at Tihar Jail in 1994. By 2010, IGNOU had 52 prison study centres with approximately 1,500 students; several other universities were also running educational programmes in India's prisons. Enrollments remained relatively low, however, as only fee-paying students were permitted to undertake courses. In 2010, IGNOU collaborated with the Ministry of Home Affairs to begin offering free education to inmates.
### Africa
Prison education is generally less well-established throughout Africa in comparison to the Western world. The first prison in Nigeria was established in 1872, however, as of 2010, no formal education programme had ever been implemented by the Nigerian government; in 1986, one prison launched organised educational programmes though they were run and funded by inmates. Following the death of de facto Nigerian President Sani Abacha in 1998, many political prisoners were released, bringing considerable media attention to the "grim conditions" they faced; prison in Nigeria was seen as purely punitive, with little to no resources given for infrastructure and rehabilitation programmes, like education. The provision of education was varied from prison to prison, though typically offered nothing better than informal apprenticeships in trades necessary to keep prisons operational. However, by 2016, the National Open University of Nigeria had established training centers at six Nigerian prisons, and offers inmates a 50% discount on all tuition fees.
In 1961, South Africa began holding criminal and political prisoners in a jail on Robben Island. Inmates were encouraged to study when the prison opened, and education programmes to ensure all inmates were literate when initiated. Only inmates whose families could afford to pay for tuition fees were permitted to participate, and access to education improved and then regressed with the prison's ever changing policy; by the end of the 1960s, programmes were restricted on the concern they were improving the inmates' morale too much. Historians also speculate the prison system was concerned that inmates were becoming better educated than the guards. Inmates were able to undertake correspondence courses through the University of London International Programmes; Nelson Mandela completed a Bachelor of Laws while in custody, though his educational privileges were revoked for four years after staff discovered he was writing an autobiography, something which was forbidden at the time. Efforts by inmates to educate themselves politically were significantly hampered by the prison's policy to forbid inmates access to newspapers, radios and television. These restrictions were lifted in the late 1970s; Jeff Radebe headed a political education programme at the prison in the 1980s. As of 1993, education was a privilege rather than one of the inmates' rights. Basic literacy courses were provided by paid inmates, rather than qualified teachers, and higher levels of education were only available to inmates who could afford correspondence courses.
With funding from the United Nations Development Programme, a basic literacy programme for inmates was launched in Ghana in 2003, and by 2008, all prisons were offering education to inmates, though the programme's effectiveness is severely affected by a lack of resources. For many years, the only prison education offered in Morocco was farming skills at the country's agricultural prisons, though a 2014 report found that educational opportunities had been increasing and that literacy, vocational and other educational programmes were being offered.
## Available programmes
Prison education courses can range from basic literacy courses and secondary school equivalency programmes to vocational education and tertiary education programmes. Non-formal activities that teach inmates new skills, like arts and crafts or amateur theatre productions, may also be considered a form of education. Likewise, some countries consider rehabilitation programmes or physical education to be educational programmes, whereas others do not. Educational programmes within prisons are typically funded by the prisons themselves, and may be run by the individual prisons or contracted out to external providers. Primary, secondary and vocational education is typically free, though some countries require inmates or their families to pay for correspondence courses. Out of 28 surveyed European countries in 2012, 15 reported offering free distance education to inmates, and 13 reported that inmates would have to pay all associated costs. In some cases, only certain courses were free; in Denmark, correspondence courses at primary and lower-secondary level are free, though a percentage of courses undertaken at a higher level must be paid for by the inmate. Many prisons have mandated that educational programmes should focus on basic literary skills, and accordingly, some do not offer any higher levels of education. It has been argued that such an approach creates a void for developing further skills, and incorrectly suggests that people with only the most basic skills will no longer commit crimes.
Inmates in the UK are able to access the government student loans for university that are available to the general public, as are those in Australia. Charity groups, like the Prisoners' Education Trust in the UK, can accept applications for grants from prisoners who cannot afford to finance their distance education. In both Australia and the UK, prisoners on remand or in hospital are not eligible to undertake educational study, nor are prisoners on remand in Poland. Norway and Finland, however, do not house those on remand separately, and they are entitled to the same educational opportunities as regular prisoners. In Denmark and Sweden inmates on remand are entitled to some education programmes, though less than those available to other prisoners.
## Challenges
Many mainstream pedagogical practices carry directly over to prison education, and commonsense pedagogical considerations are often found to be the most effective, though prison restrictions can act as a detriment to their implementation. Prison education programmes have been considered to be a "delicate balancing act" between enough cooperation with the criminal justice system and genuine efforts to offer meaningful learning experiences. For example, while teachers may wish to provide ongoing support, prisons may forbid inmates from contacting them outside of their class times for ongoing feedback and help with studies. In some prisons, teachers may be required to not address inmates by their names and instead call them "offenders", which causes a barrier to developing trust between teachers and students, often considered an important factor for successful education.
Many other barriers exist to both running and participating in educational programmes in prisons. Teachers may be faced with the challenge of instructing a class that has a large variance in age, educational levels, or employment history. Similar challenges exist in juvenile prisons, due to the varying academic and emotional needs of children. Prisons consider security concerns more important than educational goals, which restricts how some vocational trades are delivered because of concerns about prisoners manufacturing weapons. Standard security measures, such as headcounts and searches, cause frequent disruptions. If prisons are on lockdown, inmates will be unable to attend classes; lockdowns can last for several weeks.
There is a common perception that inmates have a large amount free time; however, they may only be allocated extremely limited time specifically for access to educational resources. Distance education courses are increasingly only being offered online, which presents a significant barrier as most countries do not permit inmates to access the internet. Some prisons have introduced tablet computers with offline educational content to compensate for this.
Shortages of available space in existing educational programmes can lead to significant waiting lists for enrollment. In some cases inmates may not be able to access education because the wait times are longer than their sentences. Educating foreign inmates in prisons can also be challenging, due to language barriers; inmates may be ineligible to attempt courses unless they already possess sufficient native language skills, and may also be faced with no translators available to teach them the language.
One of the biggest barriers to prison education is the frequent transfer of prisoners between correctional facilities. Inmates may be moved to another facility at any time for a variety of reasons, such as overcrowding, a downgrade in security classification, court appearances or medical appointments. Different prisons may have vastly different attitudes toward or available access to education. If an education course is run by the prison in-house, moving an enrollee to another prison will effectively force them to drop out. Inmates studying correspondence courses will have to notify their course provider, usually by mail, of their change in circumstance, and will be reliant on the goodwill of both the course provider and the new prison's staff to help them catch up on any missed work. If study materials are lost or misplaced in-transit, inmates will have to reapply to education providers for replacements. Being moved between facilities is a major cause of inmates ceasing study at university level.
Other hindrances to prison education are staff shortages, not being able to contact lecturers or other students easily, a lack of educational resources in prison libraries, not having a dedicated room to hold classes in, a lack of audio-visual equipment and computers (or simply a lack of access to them), not having a suitable place to study (shared cells often do not have desks) and not having a suitable place for group work activities after classroom hours. In-house educators may not have adequate training from the prison for their role, and a prison may have difficulty finding external teachers willing to work for the rates of pay that prisons can offer. Government departments charging one another for services may also present a barrier. For example, a state-owned prison's budget may not allow it to afford the fees set by a state-owned education provider. Prison education programmes may also face a lack of support or outright opposition from prison personnel where they operate. For example, some prison staff may resent the inmates' educational opportunities, because they are poorly educated themselves, or because they had to pay for their education while inmates are receiving theirs for free. Prisoners who have to pay for tuition, however, may be reluctant to enroll as they will not receive refunds if they cannot complete studies due to lockdowns or other circumstances beyond their control. They are also often reluctant to take out student loans for fear of leaving prison with debt. Prisoners may also be hesitant as education can be used as a way of further punishing or controlling them, as studying is a privilege officers can threaten to take away for trivial reasons.
Other reasons for reluctance to participate in programmes from inmates include previous failures in education and lack of motivation. Foreign inmates who will be deported at the end of their sentence often lack incentive to learn the language of the country they are incarcerated in, or obtain qualifications there. The types of vocational training offered by prisons in the Western world, such as manufacturing, will often not be useful to someone who will be deported to a country where the manufacturing industry is not well developed. Other types of vocational training, such as certain forms of woodwork, are outdated and will not realistically lead to employment opportunities. Juvenile prisoners may face difficulties transferring back to regular schooling after their release, due to problems recognising course credit for studies undertaken in prison. Financial incentives also play a factor in an inmate's decision to participate in educational programmes. In both the UK and Belgium, the allowance given to inmates who undertake study is lower than that given to inmates who undertake domestic work such as cleaning or food-preparation, which results in inmates having a preference for domestic work. Inmates with children have a particular preference for employment over education in prison, as it enables them to send more money to their families.
Despite the challenges, some prisoners report finding it easier to study in prison due to having less distractions, and prisoners are also often more motivated than the general population to study, resulting in higher retention rates. Lecturers working in prison report prisoners are more likely to have prepared for classes and read course notes than students in the general population.
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated many of the existing challenges to education in prison, such as increased lockdowns and transfer of prisoners between facilities. Teachers and staff were often not allowed to enter prisons due to restrictions, resulting in educational programmes being suspended. In other cases, external institutions that provided education to prisons themselves closed down during the pandemic. Posted materials being quarantined also impacted programmes that continued to run, resulting in instructors often receiving coursework from inmates well after they were due. While many education providers were able to switch to remote learning via the internet during the pandemic, this continued form of education was unable to be provided to many prisons as they do not permit internet access.
## Reductions in recidivism
### Rates
Recidivism in many countries is high, with rates over 50% not uncommon. Recidivism rates are difficult to compare between countries, due to differences in laws and also what constitutes recidivism. Some countries consider simply being re-arrested as recidivism, whereas others count re-conviction or re-imprisonment. There is also little consistency in the periods of time measured, and some countries do not release figures at all. A 2019 study analysing the latest available figures from 23 countries and self-governing areas found that within two years of release, re-arrest rates ranged from 26% (Singapore) to 60% (US), re-conviction rates ranged from 20% (Norway) to 63% (Denmark), and re-imprisonment rates ranged from 14% (Oregon, US) to 45% (Australia).
### Reasons
People in prison systems worldwide are consistently less educated than the general population, and ex-prisoners are also less likely to obtain employment after release than people of the same age that do not have a criminal record. Prison education programmes are intended to reduce recidivism by increasing an inmate's ability to secure employment. A study in the UK in 2002 found that employment reduced a former prisoner's chance of re-offending by at least a third, and a meta-analysis conducted by the RAND Corporation, which completed a comprehensive literature search of studies released in the US between 1980 and 2011, found that participating in educational courses increased an inmate's chances of being employed post-release by 13%.
Prison education programmes consistently have a significant effect on reducing recidivism, whereas prison labour, which is typically more prevalent in prison than education, has been shown to have little to no effect. Prison education also has therapeutic benefits such as alleviating boredom, improving self-esteem and stimulating creativity, all of which have been linked to reductions in recidivism; studies have shown that the majority of benefits from high-school equivalency programmes in prison come from the experience of learning, rather than from the opportunities that arise after obtaining the qualification. Educational programmes have also been shown to reduce violence within prisons; UNESCO has suggested general educational programmes for prisoners as a way of combating extremism. Education has also been advocated for prisoners who are not expected to ever be released, on the grounds that it promotes a better atmosphere in the prison community, and prisoners serving life sentences often act as role models for others.
### Effects
#### Study designs
Observational studies of the effects of education on recidivism have been criticised for self-selection bias: it has been argued that recidivism is not due to the educational courses themselves, but only reflects the positive attitudes of people who volunteer for them. "Quasi-experimental" attempts to control for such biasses with paired difference tests have found that the effect on recidivism persists. Trials that randomly assigned prisoners to either a treatment group or a control group, thus making self-selection impossible, found similar effects. Such fully-experimental interventions (randomized controlled trials) are rare in criminology; practical difficulties are often cited as a reason for this lack, but the culture of the academic field may be more relevant. A study in North Carolina using data from 1990-1991 found that there was no significant difference in outcomes for prisoners who volunteered for programmes, compared to those who were required to participate in education due to official mandates, supporting a call for mandatory literacy programmes in prison.
Some studies on the link between recidivism and education in prison disregard results if an inmate does not complete the educational course; such studies therefore never measure the potential benefits of simply participating in courses. Due to the disparaging factors that prevent inmates from completing education programmes, studies that only record results for graduates are especially vulnerable to selection bias, as they utilise an independent variable that is strongly associated with ability and motivation, though they are not able to adjust for these factors. Studies on prison education have a reputation for measuring effectiveness against rates of recidivism alone, and do not take into consideration any other factors such as the experience from the perspective of either students or teachers.
#### History and results
In the US, there were few studies on the relationship between educational programmes and recidivism before the 1970s. The first was done at the Ohio Penitentiary in 1924, and examined 200 inmates who had completed correspondence programmes. The results, which found that inmates in the programme were more "successful" after release, established the first link in the US between prison education and reduced recidivism. A 1948 study at a Wisconsin State Prison examined 680 prisoners who attended full-time study in custody for two years after their release. Results indicated a "small but statistically significant" decrease in recidivism. The first extensive study undertaken to examine the relationship was called Project Newgate. Beginning in 1969, and studying 145 inmates in Minnesota over five years, results indicated that inmates who participated in an education programme were more than 33% less likely to return to prison. Other results at the time were not unanimous. A meta-analysis in 1975 and another in 1983 found that while education programmes in prison were beneficial for inmates, their effects on recidivism were inconclusive; the methods used in these meta-analyses have been considered to be of poor quality by modern standards. Later studies, however, consistently show that educational programmes reduce the rates of re-offending. A 1987 study of Federal Bureau of Prisons inmates found that those who participated in education programmes were 8.6% less likely to return to prison, and a 1997 study of 3,200 inmates in Maryland, Minnesota and Ohio found a reduction rate of 29%. A meta-analysis of 15 studies done in the US during the 1990s found that, on average, inmates who attended tertiary level education in prison were 31% less likely to re-offend. The RAND Corporation meta-analysis found that, on average, there was a reduction rate of 13% for inmates who participated in educational programmes, and a meta-analysis of 57 studies in the US between 1980 and 2017 found the average recidivism reduction was 32%. An educational programme created by the Bard Prison Initiative has a recidivism rate of 4% for people who only attended the course and 2.5% for those who completed it.
An Australian study of prisoners released between July 2001 and November 2002 found that in the two years following release, inmates who participated in educational programmes were nine per cent less likely to return to prison. A 2005 report found that in the Australian state of Queensland there was a 24–28% reduction in the rate of recidivism among inmates who completed education courses. A study of 14,643 prisoners in Western Australia between 2005 and 2010 found that those who undertook prison education were 11.25% less likely to be re-incarcerated. In England and Wales, a 2014 study of more than 6,000 prisoners found that those who undertook education courses were seven per cent less likely to return to prison. A prison education programme in Ukraine had only three out of 168 participants (1.8%) re-offend in 2013; the re-offending rate in Ukraine in 1993 was 30% within three years and 66% within five years. As of 2012, the re-offending rate in the Dominican Republic for persons incarcerated in prisons with mandatory educational programmes is less than 3% after three years, compared to about 50% for those in prisons without such programmes.
Effects of prison education courses have been found to be cumulative; studies show the more classes an individual takes while in prison, the less likely they will be to re-offend. Studies also show higher level qualifications are associated with lower re-offending rates. A 2000 study by the Texas Department of Education found that the overall re-offending rate was 40–43%, though the rate for inmates who completed an associate degree or bachelor's degree was 27.2% and 7.8% respectively.
There is less data available on the relationship between educational programmes and recidivism in juvenile detention. Results are difficult to measure as juvenile inmates are more likely to finish their sentences before their schooling is completed. Further complications arise in countries where all juvenile inmates typically receive education, such as the US, as it is not possible to compare the effects of programmes against a "no education" control group. A meta-analysis in the US in 2014 found that juveniles who completed secondary school equivalency programmes were 47% less likely to offend. Meta-analysis on the impact of vocational education on juvenile offenders, however, only showed minor improvements below the level of statistical significance.
## Cost and financial benefits
In 2013, the cost of providing education to a prisoner in the United States was between \$1,400 and \$1,744 a year, and the cost of incarceration was between \$28,323 and \$31,286 per inmate, while in Canada the cost was on average \$2,950 per year for education, and \$111,202 for incarceration per male inmate; female inmates cost approximately twice this amount to incarcerate. In England and Wales, education courses linked with reduced recidivism are priced at about £250 each as of 2014, compared to an average annual cost of £37,648 to incarcerate each inmate. In Australia in 1988, the cost of incarcerating a prisoner was \$40,000 a year, while the entire budget for prison education at Bathurst Correctional Complex was \$120,000 per year. In order for that prison's programme to be cost effective at that time, it would have only needed to keep one person out of prison for three years. As of 2015, the average cost of incarcerating a prisoner in Australia is \$109,821 a year.
Studies have found that due to the increased post-release employment and decreased recidivism associated with prison education, the financial savings to the community more than offset the cost of the programmes. A 2003 study found that a prison education programme in Maryland reduced recidivism by 20%. Government analysts estimated that the programme was saving taxpayers more than \$24 million a year based solely on the costs of re-incarceration. In the State of Washington, the cost of post-secondary prison education in 2016 was \$1,249 per inmate, while the total financial savings per inmate due to the courses was found to be \$26,630. In 2019, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy concluded there was a 100% chance that post-secondary education programmes would produce benefits greater than the course costs, while vocational and basic literacy education were both found to have a 98% chance of being cost-effective, with net savings of \$17,226 and \$11,364 per inmate respectively. Estimates on the cost effectiveness of prison education are typically conservative, as they are unable to measure the indirect savings as a result of fewer victims, and reduced strain on police, judicial and social service systems. Taxpayers save additional money as former prisoners who gain employment pay taxes, are better able to support their families, and are less reliant on public financial assistance.
A 2004 study by the University of California, Los Angeles, found that spending \$1 million on prison education prevents about 600 crimes, and the same amount spent on incarceration prevents only 350 crimes. A 2009 study found that in the UK, every £1 spent on prison education saved taxpayers £2.50. The 2013 RAND Corporation study estimated that every dollar spent on education saves taxpayers \$4 to \$5, and that to break even on the cost of education programmes, recidivism must be reduced by between 1.9% and 2.6%. According to a 2013 article by Glenn C. Altschuler and David J. Skorton in Forbes, given the relatively low cost of education and long-term financial savings "it's hard to fathom why there isn't a national, fully funded prison education program in every [US prison] facility".
## Funding allocation and prevalence
Both the availability and rate of participation in prison education programmes, as well as the funding available for programmes, varies greatly around the world. It is often difficult to obtain meaningful data on the amount of funding available for prison education, as the money may not come from a dedicated budget, but rather from a variety of sources. In some cases, each individual prison receives a set amount of funding, and the prison warden must determine how much, if any, is spent on education. A survey in 2012 financed by the European Commission found that out of 31 countries in Europe, the majority reported no change in the budget for prison education over the previous three years. Funding was reported to have decreased for general education in three countries and increased in four. Countries that decreased funding appeared to also have decreases in prison budgets overall, while those that reported increases may have only been a reflection of the growth in prison population and corresponding increase in overall spending. The budget for prison education in Norway increased from NOK 107 million in 2005 to NOK 225 million in 2012. In the US, the rate of spending on prison education has decreased, even though the budget for the prison system overall has increased. In 2010, 29% of prison budgets were allocated to education, the lowest rate in three decades; in 1982, the rate was 33%. Funding for tertiary programmes was reduced from \$23 million in 2008 to \$17 million in 2009. In Honduras, as of 2012, 97% of the prison system's budget is spent entirely on staff salaries and food, leaving barely any funding for sanitation or other services.
A study in 1994 of 34 countries found that half offered basic literacy programmes to inmates, and one-third a form of education higher than that. In 2004, 27% of US inmates participated in an education course, and in 2005, 35–42% of US prisons were offering tertiary education programmes. As of 2009–10, six percent of inmates in participating US states were enrolled in a tertiary programme. While Kyrgyzstan's Criminal Code guarantees the right to education for inmates, the country's prison system has been plagued with problems since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, including insufficient budgets and training for educational staff. As of 2014, six of the 31 prisons in the country offered vocational education, and 13.5% of inmates overall were enrolled in such programmes. The Bahamas initiated a prison education programme in 1994, which, while successful, only had the resources to be delivered to 10.75% of inmates. As of 1996, only 6% of prisoners in Venezuela had access to education, and many prisons there did not offer education at all.
In 2012–13, 14,353 of Morocco's 70,675 inmates participated in educational programmes, an increase of about 20% on the previous year. Educating prisoners in Morocco is particularly challenging, as about 79% of inmates are illiterate and 46% are on remand. As of 2014, it is compulsory for inmates in South Africa to complete at least Grade 9 of schooling. As of 2017, 50% of inmates at Naivasha prison in Kenya are undertaking formal education, and inmates across the country can complete distance education through the University of London. As of 2016, imprisoned students in Egypt are allowed to complete university degrees, but only those that do not require practical components such as the laboratory work that science degrees would require. Prisoners are also entitled to complete their Thanaweya Amma tests. As of 1992, 440 inmates (1.3% of the prison population) in Egypt were attending secondary or university education. Inspectors from Human Rights Watch were shown classrooms purported to be used for teaching basic literacy at two prisons, though they reported the rooms appeared to not have not been used for some time, and also heard an allegation that inmates were only permitted to access education if they first converted to Islam. Prisoners in Jordan have access to secondary and tertiary education, though female prisoners are typically given access to less educational programmes than men. Roumieh Prison, which houses about half the prisoners in Lebanon, has 12% of inmates enrolled in secondary education and 7% in tertiary education as of 2014. Prisoners formally had access to a wide range of industrial vocational education, however, these programmes were terminated in 1975 due to concerns about manufacturing weapons; as of 2017 the only vocational education offered is computer literacy.
Both the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union state that no person shall be denied the right to education, and the European Prison Rules state the education of prisoners shall "be integrated with the educational and vocational training system of the country so that after their release they may continue their education and vocational training without difficulty". Despite this, prison policy documentation in several European countries does not mention education at all, and the 2012 European Commission survey found that there were 15 countries in Europe (including the UK) with less than 25% of inmates participating in educational programmes. Twenty-one of the countries reported there had been an increase in participation over the last five years, five reported no change and three reported a small decrease. Participation for juveniles was considerably higher; these results were expected as juvenile inmates are generally under the mandatory age for school attendance. Eleven of the countries reported a rate of above 50%, and a further 10 countries reported a rate of over 75%. The survey also found that general education was offered to adult inmates in all prisons in 15 countries, in the majority of prisons in six countries and in less than half of prisons in 10 countries.
In the UK, between 2010 and 2015, the number of inmates studying at university level dropped from 1,722 to 1,079, and the number of inmates studying at GCE Advanced Level had halved. As of 2016, only 16% of those who leave prison in the UK completed an education or training placement. According to a 2014 report, Belarus had 82 correctional centres, five of which were running primary and secondary schooling for inmates and a further 21 of which were offering vocational training.
While inmates may face difficulty accessing education in some European countries, it is widely available or even mandatory in others. In both Germany and the Netherlands, prisoners are required to both work and study while in custody. In 2013, between half and three-quarters of inmates in Germany participated in education programmes. Prison education is considered to be exceptionally good in Norway; by law all inmates must have access to educational courses. Similar laws are in effect in Austria, and Denmark. As of 2017, the European Union is funding a prison school in Jamaica.
In 1996–97, the rate of prisoners undertaking education in Australia ranged from 28% in South Australia to 88% in New South Wales, and averaged 57%. For 2006–07, the national average was 36.1%. A 2014 report found that the decrease in participation was due to the inability of prison educational courses across the country to cope with the growth in the prison population. In 2018–19, the national average was 38.0%. Vocational education had the highest participation rate at 24.9%, and university level education had the lowest at 1.5%. In every state and territory in Australia, the demand for prison education greatly exceeds the available space.
A 1990 investigation by Human Rights Watch which visited seven prisons in Indonesia found that all the prisons offered some form of basic literacy classes, though very little education beyond this level. In two of the prisons, "religious education" was compulsory. In 1991, 561,000 inmates in China attended education courses and 546,000 were awarded a certificate for completing such a course; there were 1.2 million inmates in China in 1991. As of 2016, only one of Singapore's 14 prisons has a school for inmates. Participation at the prison, however, is increasing. In 2015, 239 inmates sat for General Certificate of Education exams, compared to 210 in 2012.
## Opposition
Prison education programmes are not without opposition. There is often little public sympathy for prisoners, and the issue is often not given political priority, as there may be few votes to be gained from political support. The lack of support for prison education has been linked to sensationalist reporting on crime, including a disproportionate emphasis on violent offences, perpetuating public fear. This in turn leads to a political desire to be seen as "tough on crime". According to the United Nations General Assembly, the "willingness of politicians" to reflect these fears has led to a "reluctance to embed prisoners' rights to education".
Arguments made against prison education include that inmates do not deserve the right to be educated, doing so is being "soft on crime", and that it is a waste of taxpayers' money. It has also been argued that giving imprisoned people education is "rewarding" them for having committed crimes, and that it is unfair for inmates to receive free education when law-abiding citizens must pay for it. According to criminologist Grant Duwe, the complaint that giving prisoners free education effectively treats them better than regular citizens is valid, though the practice should nonetheless be encouraged due to the significant savings for taxpayers as a result of decreases in crime.
Politicians who have advocated for prison education are often met with opposition from rival parties. In 2014, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed allocating \$1 million of the state's \$2.8 billion budget for prisons towards a college programme for inmates. The proposal was supported by 53% of voters; however, it faced backlash from lawmakers and the opposition party, with 68% of Republicans opposing it. It was subsequently withdrawn and replaced by a programme that was privately funded instead. In response, three Republican congressmen introduced a bill entitled the Kids Before Cons Act, which aimed to remove Pell grants and federal financial aid for prison education, but the bill was never brought to a vote. Efforts to expand prison education in the Australian state of Queensland by the Labor Party have frequently been opposed by the Liberal Party; in 2016, then Shadow Minister for Police Jarrod Bleijie said that prison "shouldn't be a place where we want to invest all this money into making sure [inmates get] a better education than what our kids are".
## See also
- Borstal
- Incarceration and health
- Index of education articles
- Outline of education
- Politics in education
|
1,560,672 |
Prince William, Duke of Gloucester
| 1,170,382,072 |
Son of Queen Anne
|
[
"1689 births",
"1700 deaths",
"17th-century English nobility",
"Anne, Queen of Great Britain",
"Burials at Westminster Abbey",
"Courtesy dukes",
"Danish princes",
"Dukes of Gloucester",
"Garter Knights appointed by William III",
"House of Oldenburg in Denmark",
"Norwegian princes",
"People from Kensington",
"People with hydrocephalus",
"Royalty and nobility with disabilities",
"Royalty who died as children",
"Sons of monarchs"
] |
Prince William, Duke of Gloucester (24 July 1689 – 30 July 1700), was the son of Princess Anne (later Queen of England, Ireland and Scotland from 1702) and her husband, Prince George of Denmark. He was their only child to survive infancy. Styled Duke of Gloucester, he was viewed by contemporaries as a Protestant champion because his birth seemed to cement the Protestant succession established in the "Glorious Revolution" that had deposed his Catholic grandfather James II & VII the previous year.
Anne was estranged from her brother-in-law and cousin, William III & II, and her sister, Mary II, but supported links between them and her son. He grew close to his uncle William, who created him a Knight of the Garter, and his aunt Mary, who frequently sent him presents. At his nursery in Campden House, Kensington, he befriended his Welsh body-servant, Jenkin Lewis, whose memoir of the Duke is an important source for historians, and operated his own miniature army, called the "Horse Guards", which eventually comprised 90 boys.
Gloucester's precarious health was a constant source of worry to his mother. His death in 1700 at the age of 11 precipitated a succession crisis as his mother was the only individual remaining in the Protestant line of succession established by the Bill of Rights 1689. The English Parliament did not want the throne to revert to a Catholic, and so passed the Act of Settlement 1701, which settled the throne of England on Electress Sophia of Hanover, a cousin of King James II & VII, and her Protestant heirs.
## Birth and health
In late 1688, in what became known as the Glorious Revolution, the Catholic James II and VII was deposed by his Protestant nephew and son-in-law, Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange. William and his wife, James's elder daughter Mary, were recognised by the English and Scottish parliaments as king and queen. As they had no children, Mary's younger sister, Anne, was designated their heir presumptive in England and Scotland. The accession of William and Mary and the succession through Anne were enshrined in the Bill of Rights 1689.
Anne was married to Prince George of Denmark, and in their first six years of marriage Anne had been pregnant six times, which ended with two stillbirths, two miscarriages, and two baby daughters who died of smallpox in 1687 shortly after Anne’s first miscarriage. Her seventh pregnancy resulted in the birth of a son at 5 a.m. on 24 July 1689 in Hampton Court Palace. As it was usual for the births of potential heirs to the throne to be attended by several witnesses, the King and Queen and "most of the persons of quality about the court" were present. Three days later, the newborn baby was baptised William Henry after his uncle King William by Henry Compton, Bishop of London. The King, who was one of the godparents along with the Marchioness of Halifax and the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Dorset, declared him Duke of Gloucester, although the peerage was never formally created. Gloucester was second in line to the throne after his mother, and because his birth secured the Protestant succession, he was the hope of the revolution's supporters. The ode The Noise of Foreign Wars, attributed to Henry Purcell, was written in celebration of the birth. Other congratulatory odes, such as Purcell's last royal ode Who Can From Joy Refrain? and John Blow's The Duke of Gloucester's March and A Song upon the Duke of Gloucester, were composed for his birthdays in later years. Opponents of the revolution, supporters of James known as the Jacobites, spoke of Gloucester as "a sickly and doomed usurper".
Though described as a "brave livlylike [sic] boy", Gloucester became ill with convulsions when he was three weeks old, so his mother moved him into Craven House, Kensington, hoping that the air from the surrounding gravel pits would have a beneficial effect on his health. His convulsions were possibly symptomatic of meningitis, likely contracted at birth and which resulted in hydrocephalus. As was usual among royalty, Gloucester was placed in the care of a governess, Lady Fitzhardinge, and was suckled by a wet nurse, Mrs. Pack, rather than his mother. As part of his treatment, Gloucester was driven outside every day in a small open carriage, pulled by Shetland ponies, to maximise his exposure to the air of the gravel pits. When the effectiveness of this treatment exceeded their expectations, Princess Anne and her husband acquired a permanent residence in the area, Campden House, a Jacobean mansion, in 1690. It was here that Gloucester befriended Welsh body-servant Jenkin Lewis, whose memoir of his master is an important source for historians.
Throughout his life, Gloucester had a recurrent "ague", which was treated with regular doses of Jesuit's bark (an early form of quinine) by his physician, John Radcliffe. Gloucester disliked the treatment intensely, and usually vomited after being given it. Possibly as a result of hydrocephalus, he had an enlarged head, which his surgeons pierced intermittently to draw off fluid. He could not walk properly, and was apt to stumble. Nearing the age of five, Gloucester refused to climb stairs without two attendants to hold him, which Lewis blamed on indulgent nurses who over-protected the boy. His father birched him until he agreed to walk by himself. Corporal punishment was usual at the time, and such treatment would not have been considered harsh.
## Education
Gloucester's language acquisition was delayed; he did not speak correctly until the age of three, and consequently the commencement of his education was postponed by a year. The Reverend Samuel Pratt, a Cambridge graduate, was appointed the Duke's tutor in 1693. Lessons concentrated on geography, mathematics, Latin, and French. Pratt was an enemy of Jenkin Lewis, and they frequently disagreed over how Gloucester should be educated. Lewis remained Gloucester's favourite attendant because, unlike Pratt, he was knowledgeable in military matters and could therefore help him with his "Horse Guards", a miniature army consisting of local children. Over a couple of years from 1693, the size of the army grew from 22 to over 90 boys.
Princess Anne had fallen out with her sister and brother-in-law, William and Mary, and reluctantly agreed to the advice of her friend, the Countess of Marlborough, that Gloucester should visit his aunt and uncle regularly to ensure their continued goodwill towards him. In an attempt to heal the rift, Anne invited the King and Queen to see Gloucester drill the "Horse Guards". After watching the boys' display at Kensington Palace, the King praised them, and made a return visit to Campden House the following day. Gloucester grew closer to his aunt and uncle: the Queen bought him presents from his favourite toy shop regularly. Her death in 1694 led to a superficial reconciliation between Anne and William, which occasioned a move to St James's Palace, London. Gloucester having tired of him, Lewis only attended St James's every two months.
On his seventh birthday, Gloucester attended a ceremony at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, to install him as a knight of the Order of the Garter, an honour the King had given him six months before. Gloucester became ill during the celebratory banquet afterwards and left early, but after his recovery went deer hunting in Windsor Great Park, where he was blooded by Samuel Masham, his father's page. Princess Anne wrote to the Countess of Marlborough, "My boy continues yet very well, and looks better, I think, than ever he did in his life; I mean more healthy, for though I love him very well, I can't brag of his beauty."
During the trial of Sir John Fenwick, who was implicated in a plot to assassinate King William, Gloucester signed a letter to the King promising his loyalty. "I, your Majesty's most dutiful subject," the letter read, "had rather lose my life in your Majesty's cause than in any man's else, and I hope it will not be long ere you conquer France." Added to the letter was a declaration by the boys in Gloucester's army: "We, your Majesty's subjects, will stand by you while we have a drop of blood."
In 1697, Parliament granted King William £50,000 to establish a household for the Duke of Gloucester, though the King only permitted the release of £15,000, keeping the difference for himself. The establishment of Gloucester's own household in early 1698 revived the feud between Anne and William. William was determined to limit Anne's involvement in the household, and therefore appointed, against her wishes, the low church Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, as Gloucester's preceptor. Anne was high church, and Burnet, knowing she was unhappy, attempted to decline the appointment, but the King insisted he accept it. Anne's anger was only placated by an assurance from King William that she could choose all the lower servants of the household. The Earl of Marlborough, a friend of Anne's, was appointed Gloucester's governor, after the Duke of Shrewsbury declined the office on the grounds of ill health. Shortly before the King sailed for the Netherlands, he received Anne's choices from Marlborough but he refused to confirm them. His favourite, the Earl of Albemarle, eventually convinced him to agree to Anne's appointments, and the King's acceptance was sent from the Netherlands in September 1698. The Marlboroughs' twelve-year-old son, Lord Churchill, was appointed Gloucester's Master of the Horse, and became a friend and playmate. Abigail Hill, a kinswoman of the Countess of Marlborough, was appointed his laundress, and Abigail's brother, Jack Hill, was made one of Gloucester's gentlemen of the bedchamber.
Burnet lectured Gloucester for hours at a time on subjects such as the feudal constitutions of Europe and law before the time of Christianity. Burnet also encouraged Gloucester to memorise facts and dates by heart. Government ministers inspected Gloucester's academic progress every four months, finding themselves "amazed" by his "wonderful memory and good judgement". His childhood troop was disbanded, and King William made him the honorary commander of a real regiment of Dutch footguards. In 1699, he attended the trials in the House of Lords of Lord Mohun and Lord Warwick, who were accused of murder. Mohun was acquitted; Warwick was found guilty of manslaughter but escaped punishment by pleading privilege of peerage.
## Death
As he neared his eleventh birthday, Gloucester was assigned the rooms in Kensington Palace that had been used by his aunt, Queen Mary, who died in 1694. At his birthday party at Windsor, on 24 July 1700, he complained of a sudden fatigue, but was initially thought to have overheated himself while dancing. By nightfall, he had a sore throat and chills, followed by a severe headache and a high fever the next day. A physician, Hannes, did not arrive until 27 July. Gloucester was immediately bled, but his condition continued to deteriorate. Over the next day, he developed a rash and diarrhoea. A second physician, Gibbons, arrived early on 28 July, followed by Radcliffe that evening.
The physicians could not agree on a diagnosis. Radcliffe thought he had scarlet fever, while others thought it was smallpox. They administered "cordial powders and cordial juleps". Gloucester was bled, to which Radcliffe strongly objected. He told his colleagues, "you have destroyed him and you may finish him". He prescribed blistering, which was no more effective. In great pain, Gloucester spent the evening of 28 July "in great sighings and dejections of spirits ... towards morning, he complained very much of his blisters." Anne, who had spent an entire day and night by her son's bedside, now became so distressed that she fainted. However, by midday on 29 July, Gloucester was breathing more easily and his headache had diminished, leading to hopes that he would recover. The improvement was fleeting, and that evening, he was "taken with a convulsing sort of breathing, a defect in swallowing and a total deprivation of all sense". Prince William died close to 1 a.m. on 30 July 1700, with his parents beside him. In the end, the physicians decided the cause of death was "a malignant fever". An autopsy revealed severe swelling of the lymph nodes in the neck and an abnormal amount of fluid in the ventricles of his brain: "four and a half ounces of a limpid humour were taken out." Gloucester may have died from smallpox or, according to modern medical diagnosis, an acute bacterial pharyngitis, with associated pneumonia. Had he lived, though, it is almost certain the prince would have succumbed to complications of his hydrocephalus.
King William, who was in the Netherlands, wrote to Marlborough, "It is so great a loss to me as well as to all England, that it pierces my heart." Anne was prostrate with grief, taking to her chamber. In the evenings, she was carried into the garden "to divert her melancholy thoughts". Gloucester's body was moved from Windsor to Westminster on the night of 1 August, and he lay in state in the Palace of Westminster before being entombed in the Royal Vault of the Henry VII Chapel in Westminster Abbey on 9 August. As was usual for royalty in mourning, his parents did not attend the funeral service, instead remaining in seclusion at Windsor.
In an allusion to Prince William's death, Tory politician William Shippen wrote:
> So by the course of the revolving spheres, Whene'er a new-discovered star appears, Astronomers, with pleasure and amaze, Upon the infant luminary gaze. They find their heaven's enlarged, and wait from thence Some blest, some more than common influence, But suddenly, alas! The fleeting light, Retiring, leaves their hopes involv'd in endless night.
Gloucester's death destabilised the succession, as his mother was the only person remaining in the Protestant line to the throne established by the Bill of Rights 1689. Although Anne had ten other pregnancies after the birth of Gloucester, none of them resulted in a child who survived more than briefly after birth. The English parliament did not want the throne to revert to a Catholic, so it passed the Act of Settlement 1701, which settled the throne of England on a cousin of King James, Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and her Protestant heirs. Anne succeeded King William in 1702, and reigned until her death on 1 August 1714. Sophia predeceased her by a few weeks, and so Sophia's son George ascended the throne as the first British monarch of the House of Hanover.
## Titles, styles, honours and arms
William was styled as: His Royal Highness Prince William, Duke of Gloucester. The title became extinct on his death.
### Honours
- KG: Knight of the Garter, 6 January 1696
### Arms
Gloucester bore the royal arms, differenced by an inescutcheon of the Danish coat of arms and a label of three points Argent, the centre point bearing a cross Gules.
## Ancestry
|
839,579 |
Slay Tracks: 1933–1969
| 1,171,188,892 | null |
[
"1989 debut EPs",
"Lo-fi music EPs",
"Pavement (band) albums"
] |
Slay Tracks: 1933–1969 (usually referred to as Slay Tracks) is the debut EP by American indie rock band Pavement. Pavement—at that time, a duo of just its two founding members Stephen Malkmus (guitar, vocals) and Scott Kannberg (guitar)—recorded Slay Tracks with producer and future member Gary Young (drums) during a four-hour session. Pavement self-released the EP as a 7" vinyl record on the band's own record label Treble Kicker in 1989. The music of Slay Tracks was influenced by indie and punk rock bands such as Swell Maps and The Fall, and many of the lyrics were inspired by life in the band's hometown of Stockton, California.
Although only 1,000 copies of Slay Tracks were pressed, the EP became an underground hit. Upon release, the EP was critically praised by independently produced zines. The EP managed to generate buzz for Pavement in the UK after The Wedding Present's cover of the song "Box Elder" received some airplay from the famous radio disc jockey John Peel. The release and relative success of Slay Tracks was significant to Pavement's subsequent signing to Drag City, and later to Matador Records. The band's Westing (By Musket and Sextant) (1993) compiled the songs from the band's three EPs prior to their debut album Slanted and Enchanted: Slay Tracks, Demolition Plot J-7, and Perfect Sound Forever. The compilation allowed those songs to reach a wider audience than the EP's limited initial release.
## Background
Pavement was formed in 1989 in Stockton, California, by Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg. Malkmus and Kannberg had previously performed together in the band Bag O' Bones. Pavement had its start playing at open mic nights at clubs and bars. The songs the band played during this time were mostly covers, although they also performed many original songs that would later be released on Slay Tracks. Malkmus recalls, "It was pretty reasonable to be able to make a single for \$1,000, so we decided to go for it. We didn't have any real plans because we weren't a real band." Two local studios existed in Stockton, the cheaper and less professionally minded of which was Gary Young's Louder Than You Think Studio. The band decided to record at Young's studio due to their admiration of other local punk bands who had recorded there, including The Young Pioneers and The Authorities. Kannberg reportedly borrowed \$800 from his father to record Slay Tracks.
## Recording
Slay Tracks was recorded during a four-hour session on January 17, 1989, at Young's studio. Kannberg, describing the studio and the recording process, said, "You go into his house and it's stuff everywhere, old dogs lying around, big pot plants everywhere, and Gary tells us that he got all his equipment by selling pot! It was us going in and pretty much just laying down the songs with a guide guitar and a detuned guitar through a bass amp and then we'd play drums over the top." Young, though bewildered by the band's sound, contributed by playing drums. He recalled, "[Malkmus and Kannberg] come in and they play this weird guitar noise and it just sounds like noise, with no background. My drums were in there so I said, 'Should I drum?' and they said 'Okay.'" Kannberg said, "We did it really fast. We probably spent one day tracking and one day mixing it." The title of the EP had been decided prior to its recording, and the pseudonyms S.M. and Spiral Stairs were used to credit Malkmus and Kannberg respectively.
## Composition and lyrics
Most of the music on Slay Tracks was written by Malkmus, but the music to "Box Elder" was written by Kannberg. Malkmus stated his influences on the record included Chrome, Swell Maps, and The Fall. The songs on the EP drew comparisons to the likes of R.E.M., Pixies, and Sonic Youth by Stephen Thomas Erlewine and Heather Phares of AllMusic (which, like all of the World Wide Web, did not exist when the EP was released). Radio static and noise are prominently used on the EP, techniques which are characteristic of the lo-fi and noise pop genres that Pavement are frequently associated with. According to Malkmus, "We decided to use static as the third instrument ... It was pretty exciting to be so experimental." Young played drums on "Box Elder" and "Price Yeah!", and frequently improvised. Malkmus played drums on "Maybe Maybe", while both Malkmus and Kannberg drummed on "She Believes".
"You're Killing Me", the longest song on the EP at three minutes and 20 seconds, is an example of the impact punk rock had on Pavement. The song features fuzz effects, repetitive lyrics, and no percussion or drums. "Box Elder", an ironic song about someone wanting to move to Box Elder, Montana, was considered by Gerard Cosloy to be an example of Malkmus's "honest, direct, and simplistic" lyrical style, and features greater influence from pop music than the rest of the EP. "Maybe Maybe" features distorted guitars and indiscernible vocals, and "Price Yeah!" has a sound typical of hardcore punk. The band's hometown of Stockton inspired the band's lyrics and sound. "There's something empty about Stockton," Malkmus said. "I wanted to convey that in our music." He told Melody Maker, "Pavement was originally a pathetic effort by us to do something to escape the terminal boredom we were experiencing in Stockton."
## Release
After recording was complete, Kannberg was tasked with releasing the music himself, as Malkmus had departed on a trip to parts of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Kannberg designed the cover of the EP and sent copies to various independent labels, distributors, and zines. He recalled, "I had no idea how to do it. I'd send off these little notes to my favorite labels like SST and Twin Tone and ask, 'How do I do this?'" A representative from SST recommended that Kannberg use Erica Records, a Los Angeles 7" manufacturer. Kannberg chose Erica Records to manufacture Slay Tracks but was unhappy with the master recording produced by the company: "It sounds like it sounds now—it's just a mess—but being poor and not really caring I said, 'Okay, that's cool, if it sounds like that–whatever.'" Slay Tracks was pressed in a limited run of 1,000 copies, with a green dinosaur stamp on the label of the first 50 copies. The EP was distributed in the United States and England through Kannberg's own Treble Kicker Records, though Malkmus soon came across a copy in a record store while visiting Austria.
Slay Tracks found unexpected attention after The Wedding Present, an English band, covered "Box Elder" on their own 1990 EP, Brassneck. The Wedding Present's bassist Keith Gregory had been introduced to Slay Tracks by future Pavement bassist Mark Ibold while visiting New York City. The cover differs from the original in that the line "that I had to get the fuck out of this town" was changed to "that I had to get right out of this town". The cover version received radio airplay from influential English disc jockey John Peel, generating publicity for both the Wedding Present and Pavement. Pavement had not been asked permission or informed of the cover until after it was already on UK radio. Kannberg said he initially felt "offended", but his opinion of the cover and its significance later changed: "It was so cool that some band from the UK wanted to cover this obscure, horribly recorded song. At the time I probably never appreciated the full extent of how them covering the song helped Pavement, especially in the UK, but it really did, and I'll always be grateful to them for that."
Shortly after its release, Slay Tracks became a collector's item. According to an April 1990 Drag City press release, copies were typically sold for \$500–\$600. Malkmus and Kannberg each kept 100 copies of the EP, and Malkmus said "I used to sell them for fifty dollars. When I needed money I'd go in and sell a couple to the store and they'd sell for a hundred dollars each. I rarely meet anyone who bought it when it originally came out." Malkmus also said that the pair "probably gave away about one-hundred to friends and bands we later toured with." The songs on Slay Tracks found airplay on several college radio stations, including WTJU at the University of Virginia and KALX at the University of California, Berkeley. The band had not anticipated the EP's relative degree of success; Kannberg later said "[i]t was very surprising to find that people were into [Slay Tracks]."
## Reception
Slay Tracks received generally positive reviews. Much of the initial critical reception to Slay Tracks was from zines to whom Kannberg had sent the EP. A review in the San Francisco-based zine Maximum RocknRoll said "Most of the tunes work by virtue of their eclecticism, freshness, and originality—this is a good one." The zine Conflict called the EP "absolutely perfect." Slay Tracks also received attention from mainstream publications. Robert Christgau of the Village Voice rated Slay Tracks an A−, and selected it as his fourth favorite EP of 1990. Spin's review said: "a long stream of noise water is omitted by Pavement. ... What a party!" A reviewer for Option praised the band's lo-fi characteristics and attitude, calling the EP "loose and intentionally lo-fi," and saying "let's hope this Pavement stays cracked." College Music Journal's review was also favorable, noting "You're Killing Me" and "She Believes" as highlights, and calling the EP a "deep, intoxicating breath of homemade music from people with tongues in their cheeks and hearts on their sleeves ... the twin engine feedback and fuzz hits dead center with naive [sic] melodic balance, and whether that is in spite of or because of the sloppy, one-take feel is inconsequential."
## Legacy
Young's drum performance on Slay Tracks eventually led to him joining Pavement as a full-time member. Young produced the group's 1990 EP Demolition Plot J-7, but displayed hostility toward then-current drummer Jason Fawkes. Fawkes left Pavement in 1991 due to animosity with Malkmus, allowing Young to drum on their third EP, Perfect Sound Forever. Young drummed on all Pavement releases from then on until 1992's Watery, Domestic, after which he was fired for his increasingly erratic behavior and was replaced with Steve West. Young's drumming on Slay Tracks was later recognized as an important turning point in Pavement's history, and was considered to be "the opportunity of a lifetime" by C. Harris-Nystrom of the News & Review.
Dan Koretzky, founder of Drag City, ordered 200 copies of the EP for the Chicago Reckless Records store he worked for at the time. Koretzky asked Kannberg if he would sign to Drag City during the same phone call that he ordered the EP. Kannberg remembered expressing reluctance to sign to any label, but Drag City producer and session musician Rian Murphy recalled that "We asked, they said yes. Lives didn't seem to be on the line." Chris Lombardi and Gerard Cosloy of Matador Records also first heard of Pavement after Kannberg sent a copy of Slay Tracks to their zine, Conflict. Matador signed Pavement in 1992 for the release of their debut studio album, Slanted and Enchanted. Pavement returned to Peel's show the same year and, in a cover of Silver Jews' "Secret Knowledge of Backroads", Malkmus ad-libbed the line, "It's not as good as the first EP"—an ambiguous reference to either Slay Tracks or the Silver Jews' early recordings, on which he had appeared.
The songs on Slay Tracks are all included on the 1993 compilation Westing (By Musket and Sextant), along with several of Pavement's other early material. Westing has sold 63,000 copies, and was praised by Robert Christgau and Stephen Thomas Erlewine for making songs previously found exclusively on vinyl available on compact disc. All of the songs from Slay Tracks were played live throughout Pavement's history, with "Box Elder" particularly cited as an "old favorite" for fans at concerts. Live performances of "Box Elder" has also been included on the compilation reissues Slanted and Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe and Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition, with the version on the latter beginning with a short jam session. In a 1999 retrospective of the band's career, Donna Freydkin of CNN.com called Slay Tracks "a quick underground favorite", while John Hicks of the Planet Weekly wrote "Although Pavement was conceived as a studio-only project, the underground success of Slay Tracks ensured that it was only a matter of time before the group became a full-fledged performing entity."
## Track listing
## Personnel
### Pavement
- Stephen Malkmus – lead vocals (tracks 1–5), guitar (tracks 1–2, 4–5), keyboard (track 1), synthesizer (track 5), drums (tracks 3–4), bass guitar (track 2)
- Scott Kannberg – guitar (tracks 1–5), drums (tracks 3–4), trombone (track 4)
- Gary Young – drums (tracks 2, 5)
### Additional musicians
- Jeff Doyle – drums (track 4)
- Kelly Hensley – drums (track 4)
|
2,837,984 |
Piano Sonata No. 31 (Beethoven)
| 1,170,217,727 |
1822 piano sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven
|
[
"1821 compositions",
"Compositions in A-flat major",
"Piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven"
] |
The Piano Sonata No. 31 in A major, Op. 110, by Ludwig van Beethoven was composed in 1821 and published in 1822. It is the middle piano sonata in the group of three (Opp. 109, 110, and 111) that he wrote between 1820 and 1822, and is the penultimate of his piano sonatas. Though the sonata was commissioned in 1820, Beethoven did not begin work on Op. 110 until the latter half of 1821, and final revisions were completed in early 1822. The delay was due to factors such as Beethoven's work on the Missa solemnis and his deteriorating health. The original edition was published by Schlesinger in Paris and Berlin in 1822 without dedication, and an English edition was published by Muzio Clementi in 1823.
The work is in three movements. The Moderato first movement follows a typical sonata form with an expressive and cantabile opening theme. The Allegro second movement begins with a terse but humorous scherzo, which Martin Cooper believes is based on two folk songs, followed by a trio section. The last movement comprises multiple contrasting sections: a slow introductory recitative, an arioso dolente, a fugue, a return of the arioso, and a second fugue that builds to a passionate and heroic conclusion. William Kinderman finds parallels between the last movement's fugue and other late works by Beethoven, such as the fughetta in the Diabelli Variations and sections of the Missa solemnis, and Adolf Bernhard Marx favourably compares the fugue to those of Bach and Handel. The sonata is the subject of musical analyses including studies by Donald Tovey, Denis Matthews, Heinrich Schenker, and Charles Rosen. It has been recorded by pianists such as Artur Schnabel, Glenn Gould, and Alfred Brendel.
## Background
In the summer of 1819, Adolf Martin Schlesinger, from the Schlesinger firm of music publishers based in Berlin, sent his son Maurice to meet Beethoven to form business relations with the composer. The two met in Mödling, where Maurice left a favourable impression on the composer. After some negotiation by letter, the elder Schlesinger offered to purchase three piano sonatas for 90 ducats in April 1820, though Beethoven had originally asked for 120 ducats. In May 1820, Beethoven agreed, and he undertook to deliver the sonatas within three months. These three sonatas are the ones now known as Opp. 109, 110, and 111, the last of Beethoven's piano sonatas.
The composer was prevented from completing the promised sonatas on schedule by several factors, including his work on the Missa solemnis (Op. 123), rheumatic attacks in the winter of 1820, and a bout of jaundice in the summer of 1821. Barry Cooper notes that Op. 110 "did not begin to take shape" until the latter half of 1821. Although Op. 109 was published by Schlesinger in November 1821, correspondence shows that Op. 110 was still not ready by the middle of December 1821. The sonata's completed autograph score bears the date 25 December 1821, but Beethoven continued to revise the last movement and did not finish until early 1822. The copyist's score was presumably delivered to Schlesinger around this time, since Beethoven received a payment of 30 ducats for the sonata in January 1822.
Adolf Schlesinger's letters to Beethoven in July 1822 confirm that the sonata, along with Op. 111, was being engraved in Paris. The sonata was published simultaneously in Paris and Berlin that year, and it was announced in the Bibliographie de la France on 14 September. Some copies of the first edition reached Vienna as early as August, and the sonata was announced in the Wiener Zeitung that month. The sonata was published without a dedication, though there is evidence that Beethoven intended to dedicate Opp. 110 and 111 to Antonie Brentano. In February 1823, Beethoven sent a letter to the composer Ferdinand Ries in London, informing him that he had sent manuscripts of Opp. 110 and 111 so that Ries could arrange their publication in Britain. Beethoven noted that while Op. 110 was already available in London, the edition had mistakes that would be corrected in Ries's edition. Ries persuaded Muzio Clementi to acquire the British rights to the two sonatas, and Clementi published them in London that year.
## Form
The sonata is in three movements, though Schlesinger's original edition separated the third movement into an Adagio and a Fuga. Alfred Brendel characterises the main themes of the sonata as all derived from the hexachord – the first six notes of the diatonic scale – and the intervals of the third and fourth that divide it. He also points out that contrary motion is a feature in much of the work, and is particularly prominent in the second movement.
The main themes of each movement begin with a phrase covering the range of a sixth. Another point of significance is the note F, which is the sixth degree of the A major scale. F forms the peak of the first phrase of the sonata and acts as the tonic of the second movement. Fs in the right hand also begin the second movement's trio section and the third movement's introduction.
The sonata lasts 19 minutes.
### I. Moderato cantabile molto espressivo
The first movement in A major is marked Moderato cantabile molto espressivo ("at a moderate speed, in a singing style, very expressively"). Denis Matthews describes the first movement as "orderly and predictable sonata form", and Charles Rosen calls the movement's structure Haydnesque. Its opening is marked con amabilità (amiably). After a pause on the dominant seventh, the opening is extended in a cantabile theme. This leads to a light arpeggiated demisemiquaver transition passage. The second group of themes in the dominant E includes appoggiatura figures, and a bass which descends in steps from E to G three times while the melody rises by a sixth. The exposition ends with a semiquaver cadential theme.
The development section (which Rosen calls "radically simple") consists of restatements of the movement's initial theme in a falling sequence, with underlying semiquaver figures. Donald Tovey compares the artful simplicity of the development with the entasis of the Parthenon's columns.
The recapitulation begins conventionally with a restatement of the opening theme in the tonic (A major), Beethoven combining it with the arpeggiated transition motif. The cantabile theme gradually modulates via the subdominant to E major (a seemingly remote key which both Matthews and Tovey rationalise by viewing it as a notational convenience for F major). The harmony soon modulates back to the home key of A major. The movement's coda closes with a cadence over a tonic pedal.
### II. Allegro molto
The scherzo is marked Allegro molto (very fast). Matthews describes it as "terse", and William Kinderman as "humorous", even though it is in the F minor key. The rhythm is complex with many syncopations and ambiguities. Tovey observes that this ambiguity is deliberate: attempts to characterise the movement as a gavotte are prevented by the short length of the bars implying twice as many accented beats – and had he wanted to, Beethoven could have composed a gavotte.
Beethoven uses antiphonal dynamics (four bars of piano contrasted against four bars of forte), and opens the movement with a six-note falling-scale motif. Martin Cooper finds that Beethoven indulged the rougher side of his humour in the scherzo by using motifs from two folk songs, "Unsa kätz häd kaz'ln g'habt" ("Our cat has had kittens") and "Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich" ("I am a draggle-tail, you are a draggle-tail"). Tovey earlier decided that such theories of the themes' origins were "unscrupulous", since the first of these folk songs was arranged by Beethoven some time before this work's composition in payment for a publisher's trifling postage charge – the nature of the arrangement making it clear that the folk songs were of little importance to the composer.
The trio in D major juxtaposes "abrupt leaps" and "perilous descents", ending quietly and leading to a modified reprise of the scherzo with repeats, the first repeat written out to allow for an extra ritardando. After a few syncopated chords the movement's short coda comes to rest in F major (a Picardy third) via a long broken arpeggio in the bass.
### III. Adagio ma non troppo – Allegro ma non troppo
The third movement's structure alternates two slow arioso sections with two faster fugues. In Brendel's analysis, there are six sections – recitative, arioso, first fugue, arioso, fugue inversion, homophonic conclusion. In contrast, Martin Cooper describes the structure as a "double movement" (an Adagio and a finale).
The scherzo's concluding ritardando F major bass arpeggio resolves to B minor in the third movement's beginning, indicating a departure from the humour of the scherzo. Following three bars of introduction is the unbarred recitative, during which the tempo changes multiple times. This then leads to an A minor arioso dolente, a lament whose initial melodic contour is similar to the opening of the scherzo (although Tovey dismisses this as insignificant). The arioso is marked "Klagender Gesang" (Song of Lamentation) and is supported by repeated chords. Commentators (including Kinderman and Rosen) have seen the initial recitative and arioso as "operatic", and Brendel writes that the lament resembles the aria "Es ist vollbracht" (It is finished) from Bach's St John Passion. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians notes that the term "arioso" is rarely used in instrumental music.
The arioso leads into a three-voice fugue in A major, whose subject is constructed from three parallel rising fourths separated by two falling thirds . The opening theme of the first movement carries within it elements of this fugue subject (the motif A–D–B–E), and Matthews sees a foreshadowing of it in the alto part of the first movement's antepenultimate bar. The countersubject moves by smaller intervals. Kinderman finds a parallel between this fugue and the fughetta of the composer's later Diabelli Variations (Op. 120), and also notes similarities with the "Agnus Dei" and "Dona nobis pacem" sections of the contemporaneous Missa solemnis. Gould contrasts this fugue, which is used in a "lyric, idyllic, contemplative" context, with the violent but disciplined fugue from the Hammerklavier sonata (Op. 106) that "revealed the turbulent, forceful Beethoven".
The fugue is broken off by a dominant seventh of A major, which resolves enharmonically onto a G minor chord in second inversion. This leads into a reprise of the arioso dolente in G minor marked ermattet (exhausted). Kinderman contrasts the perceived "earthly pain" of the lament with the "consolation and inward strength" of the fugue – which Tovey points out had not reached a conclusion. Rosen finds that G minor, the tonality of the leading note, gives the arioso a flattened quality befitting exhaustion, and Tovey describes the broken rhythm of this second arioso as being "through sobs".
The arioso ends with repeated G major chords of increasing strength, repeating the sudden minor-to-major device that concluded the scherzo. A second fugue emerges with the subject of the first inverted, marked wieder auflebend (again reviving; poi a poi di nuovo vivente – little by little with renewed vigour – in the traditional Italian); Brendel ascribes an illusory quality to this passage. Some performance instructions in this passage begin poi a poi and nach und nach (little by little). Initially, the pianist is instructed to play una corda (that is to use the soft pedal). The final fugue gradually increases in intensity and volume, initially in the key of G major. After all three voices have entered, the bass introduces a diminution of the first fugue's subject (whose accent is also altered), while the treble augments the same subject with the rhythm across the bars. The bass eventually enters with the augmented version of the fugue subject in C minor, and this ends on E. During this statement of the subject in the bass, the pianist is instructed to gradually raise the una corda pedal. Beethoven then relaxes the tempo (marked Meno allegro) and introduces a truncated double-diminution of the fugue subject; after statements of the first fugue subject and its inversion surrounded by what Tovey calls the "flame" motif, the contrapuntal parts lose their identity. Brendel views the section that follows as a "[shaking] off" of the constraints of polyphony; Tovey labels it a "peroration", calling the passage "exultant". It leads to a closing four-bar tonic arpeggio and a final emphatic chord of A major.
Matthews writes that it is not fanciful to see the final movement's second fugue as a "gathering of confidence after illness or despair", a theme which can be discerned in other late works by Beethoven (Brendel compares it with the Cavatina from the String Quartet No. 13). Martin Cooper describes the coda as "passionate" and "heroic", but not out of place after the ariosos' distress or the fugues' "luminous verities". Rosen states that this movement is the first time in the history of music where the academic devices of counterpoint and fugue are integral to a composition's drama, and observes that Beethoven in this work does not "simply symbolize or represent the return to life, but persuades us physically of the process".
## Reception
From the 1810s Beethoven's reputation went largely undisputed by contemporary critics, and most of his works received favourable initial reviews. For example, an anonymous reviewer in October 1822 described the Op. 110 sonata as "superb" and offered "repeated thanks to its creator". In 1824, an anonymous critic reviewing the Opp. 109–111 sonatas wrote in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung that contemporary opposition against Beethoven's works "had only small, fleeting success". The critic then commented, "Scarcely had any of [Beethoven]'s artistic productions entered into the world than their fame was forever established."
Adolf Bernhard Marx, in his March 1824 review of the sonata, lauded Beethoven's work and particularly praised the third movement's fugue, adding that the fugue "must be studied along with the richest ones by Sebastian Bach and Händel." In the 1860 edition of his biography of Beethoven, Anton Schindler wrote that the fugue "is not difficult to play but is full of charm and beauty." Likewise, William Kinderman describes the fugue's subject as a "sublime fugal idiom".
When writing about the sonata in 1909, Hermann Wetzel observed, "Not a single note is superfluous, and there is no passage ... that can be treated as you please, no trivial ornament". Martin Cooper claimed in 1970 that Op. 110 was the most frequently played out of the last five Beethoven piano sonatas.
In the program notes for his 2020 online concert of the Opp. 109–111 sonatas, Jonathan Biss writes of Op. 110: "In none of the other 31 piano sonatas does Beethoven cover as much emotional territory: it goes from the absolute depths of despair to utter euphoria ... it is unbelievably compact given its emotional richness, and its philosophical opening idea acts as the work’s thesis statement, permeating the work, and reaching its apotheosis in its final moments."
## Recordings
The Op. 110 sonata was recorded on 21 January 1932 by Artur Schnabel in Abbey Road Studios, London, for the first complete recording of the Beethoven piano sonatas. The piece was the first to be recorded in the set. Myra Hess' recording of the work in 1953 was described by The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as among her "greatest successes in the recording studio". Op. 110 was included in Glenn Gould's 1956 recording of the last three Beethoven sonatas, and its third movement was discussed and performed by Gould on a 4 March 1963 broadcast. As part of complete recordings of the Beethoven piano sonatas, Op. 110 was recorded by Wilhelm Kempff in 1951, Claudio Arrau in 1965, Alfred Brendel in 1973, Maurizio Pollini in 1975, Daniel Barenboim in 1984, and Igor Levit by 2019.
|
22,115,588 |
Raymond Brownell
| 1,169,294,421 |
Senior Royal Australian Air Force officer, First World War flying ace
|
[
"1894 births",
"1974 deaths",
"Australian Army soldiers",
"Australian Commanders of the Order of the British Empire",
"Australian World War I flying aces",
"Australian military personnel of World War I",
"Australian recipients of the Military Cross",
"Australian recipients of the Military Medal",
"British Army personnel of World War I",
"Military personnel from Hobart",
"People educated at Scotch College, Melbourne",
"Royal Air Force personnel of World War I",
"Royal Australian Air Force officers",
"Royal Australian Air Force personnel of World War II",
"Royal Flying Corps officers"
] |
Air Commodore Raymond James Brownell, CBE, MC, MM (17 May 1894 – 12 April 1974) was a senior officer in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and a First World War flying ace. Born in Hobart, Tasmania, Brownell was working as a clerk with a firm of accountants when he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on the outbreak of the First World War. He served during the Gallipoli Campaign before transferring to the Western Front. Awarded the Military Medal for his actions during the Battle of Pozières, he was accepted for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps in 1917. After flight training in the United Kingdom, Brownell was commissioned as a second lieutenant and posted for operational service over the Western Front in September 1917. Moving with his squadron to Italy, he was awarded the Military Cross and credited with shooting down 12 aircraft by war's end. Taking his discharge in 1919, Brownell returned to Australia.
Commissioned in the RAAF in 1921, Brownell had risen to the rank of group captain by the beginning of the Second World War. Establishing the RAAF base in Singapore, he returned to Australia in 1941 as an air commodore and was appointed to lead No. 1 Training Group. He was Air Officer Commanding Western Area from January 1943 until July 1945, when he took charge of the recently formed No. 11 Group on Morotai. Retiring from the Air Force in 1947, Brownell assumed a partnership in a stockbroking firm. He died in 1974 aged 79; his autobiography, From Khaki to Blue, was published posthumously.
## Early life
Brownell was born in the Hobart suburb of New Town, Tasmania, on 17 May 1894 to William Percival Brownell, a draper, and his wife Julie Ann James (née Scott). Initially educated at Leslie House School, Brownell later attended Scotch College, Melbourne where he was an active sportsman. On graduation, he was apprenticed to a firm of public accountants and auditors in Hobart. In 1912, Brownell enlisted in the Citizens Military Force and was posted to the 41st Battery, Australian Field Artillery.
## First World War
### Australian Imperial Force
On 12 September 1914, Brownell transferred to the Australian Imperial Force for service during the First World War. Allotted to the 9th Battery, 3rd Field Artillery Brigade with the rank of gunner, Brownell embarked from Hobart aboard HMAT Geelong on 20 October, bound for Egypt. On arrival, the unit spent several months training in the desert, before it was posted for service during the Gallipoli Campaign. Instead of landing on the peninsula with the battery, Brownell was transferred to Alexandria where the Army required his administrative abilities as an accountant.
During July 1915, Brownell was shipped to Gallipoli and rejoined the 9th Battery. Promoted to bombardier on 12 November, he was in one of the final Australian waves to be evacuated from the peninsula in December during the Allied withdrawal. Returning to Egypt, he was advanced to provisional sergeant on 24 February 1916. Embarking with his unit from Alexandria, Brownell arrived in France for service on the Western Front on 29 March, following a six-day voyage.
On 21–22 July 1916, Brownell was in action with his battery at Pozières, during which the unit was subject to severe German shellfire. Throughout the engagement, Brownell established and maintained communications between the battery and firing line, despite fatigue or personal risk to himself. Commended for his "particularly meritorious service ... and ... gallantry in this work", Brownell was subsequently recommended for the Military Medal. The notification for the award was published in a supplement to the London Gazette on 16 November 1916.
### Royal Flying Corps
In October 1916, Brownell applied for a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps. One of 5,000 applicants, Brownell was accepted on 1 January 1917 along with a further 200 Australians. Posted for pilot training, he proceeding to England and was posted to No. 3 School of Military Aeronautics at Exeter College, Oxford, from 26 January. On graduating from the course, Brownell was discharged from the Australian Imperial Force on 16 March and commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps the following day.
Allotted to No. 45 Squadron RFC flying Sopwith Camels, Brownell moved to France for operational service over the Western Front during September 1917. On 10 September, he took part in his first patrol, during which he shot down a two-seater German aircraft. In his time flying over the Western Front, Brownell accumulated a total of five victories and achieved 'ace' status before his squadron was transferred to Italy in December. Later that month, Brownell and his observer, Lieutenant Henry Moody, shot down German ace Alwin Thurm over Asolo.
Appointed a flight commander in No. 45 Squadron, Brownell was promoted to temporary captain on 11 February 1918. During aerial engagements against Central aircraft over the Italian front, he was accredited with the destruction of a further seven aircraft, bringing his total to 12 plus nine probables. Brownell's aerial victories were composed of five aircraft and one shared destroyed, two and one shared out of control, one shared captured, and one balloon. For his success in bringing six of these aircraft down over a three-month period, Brownell was awarded the Military Cross. The announcement of the decoration was published in a supplement of the London Gazette on 4 March 1918, with the citation for the award being published in a later issue on 16 August 1918, reading:
> War Office, 16th August, 1918.
>
> With reference to the awards conferred as announced in the London Gazette dated 4th March, 1918, the following are the statements of service for which the decorations were conferred:—
>
> Awarded the Military Cross.
>
> 2nd Lt. Raymond James Brownell, M.M., R.F.C., Spec. Res.
>
> For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. Within the last three months he has brought down six enemy aeroplanes, four of which were seen to come down in flames, the other two falling completely out of control. The dash, gallantry and offensive spirit displayed on all occasions by this officer are worthy of the highest praise.
In April 1918, Brownell was granted compassionate leave to visit his seriously ill mother. Leaving No. 45 Squadron, he travelled to Tasmania. At the end of his leave in September, he commenced his return journey to the United Kingdom. During the voyage, he became grievously ill with pneumonic influenza. On arrival, Brownell accepted a commission in the newly formed Royal Air Force (RAF). Brownell's mother again suffered a deterioration in health, so he sought to resign from the RAF and was placed on the unemployed list on 14 August 1919. Embarking for Tasmania, he arrived during September.
## Inter-war years
On his return to Australia, Brownell was employed as a sub-accountant for a firm of merchants in Melbourne, and later with the Hobart City Council as a clerk. On 22 April 1920, Brownell acted as one of the pallbearers at the military funeral of his friend and fellow No. 45 Squadron officer, Captain Cedric Howell, who had been killed in an aeroplane crash while participating in the England to Australia air race. Seeking a position in the newly formed Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), Brownell was commissioned as a flying officer on 12 September 1921 and posted to RAAF Point Cook in Victoria, training Air Force cadets. In a ceremony at St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Hobart, on 26 August 1925, Brownell married Rhyllis Jean Birchall; the couple would later have two daughters. The following year, Brownell assumed command of No. 1 Squadron. He led the squadron until 1928, when he was appointed to the RAAF Headquarters in Melbourne as Director of Personnel Services.
During 1934, Brownell was posted to England for exchange service with the RAF. Made second-in-command of No. 3 Flying Training School at Grantham, he was promoted to wing commander on 1 April 1936. While still serving in the United Kingdom, Brownell was appointed commanding officer of No. 23 (City of Perth) Squadron (later No. 25 Squadron), which had been formed earlier in 1937. The squadron moved to RAAF Base Pearce in Western Australia during March 1938, at which time Brownell returned to Australia and assumed command of the unit along with the base. Brownell was the first Commanding Officer of Pearce, which was not only the first RAAF establishment to be located in Western Australia, but also the first permanent air force unit to be established in the state.
## Second World War
On the outbreak of the Second World War, more units were placed under Brownell's purview at RAAF Base Pearce and he was consequently promoted to temporary group captain in December 1939. With the introduction of Lockheed Hudson aircraft to the RAAF in February 1940, several units were re-equipped, including No. 14 Squadron at RAAF Base Pearce. The Hudsons replaced the squadron's Avro Ansons, which were to be ferried back to the eastern coast of Australia to be used as training aircraft. On one occasion, Brownell took part in ferrying an Anson to RAAF Point Cook with No. 14 Squadron pilot Charles Learmonth. Arriving with the aircraft, the pair piloted a de Havilland Moth Minor—a two-seated, open-cockpit, monoplane—back to Pearce. The return journey took Brownell and Learmonth seven days to complete, and involved a total of twenty-one refuelling stops along the way.
In August 1940, Brownell was ordered to Singapore to establish and command an RAAF station on the island, as well as administer the RAAF squadrons located in Malaya. Embarking aboard the SS Strathallan in mid-August, Brownell and his staff formed the RAAF station within two weeks of arrival at Sembawang. Under the control of RAF Far East Command, the station was established as RAF Sembawang. During this time, Brownell frequently visited the Malaya peninsula.
Promoted to acting air commodore, Brownell returned to Australia in August 1941 and was appointed Air Officer Commanding No. 1 Training Group in Melbourne. In this position, Brownell commanded approximately thirty establishments located in southern Australia. On 1 January 1943, he was posted as Air Officer Commanding Western Area. Based at RAAF Base Pearce, Brownell's responsibilities involved coordinating training and directing long-range bombing operations. Following intelligence reports that a Japanese force was en route to raid Western Australia, the Australian Government ordered a build-up of the defences in the area. In response to this, Brownell organised air defences around Perth and the Exmouth Gulf during March 1944. With the use of Army transports, he also reinforced Cunderdin with supplies and bombs for the use of the heavy bombers in the area. The Japanese attack did not occur. For his service as Air Officer Commanding Western Area, Brownell was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1945 New Years Honours.
Relinquishing command of Western Area in July 1945, Brownell was appointed commander of the recently formed No. 11 Group. No. 11 Group was established as a static organisation that was to take administrative control of all RAAF units based on Morotai. The group assumed its role on 30 July, and had the initial jurisdiction of all Dutch territory in the area, along with British North Borneo and Sarawak. It also held the three main responsibilities of local air defence and sea lane protection, support of adjacent formations and offensive operations against Japanese targets within range, and line-of-communication duties. The group was formed too late to assume all of its responsibilities before the Second World War drew to an end. Brownell was present at the Japanese surrenders in Manila, Tokyo, and on Morotai. He was selected by the Australian government to attend the ceremony aboard the USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, but was replaced by the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Vice Marshal George Jones, when Jones became available to make the trip to Japan.
## Later life
Returning to Western Australia after the war, Brownell attended an investiture ceremony at Government House, Perth, on 3 January 1947, where he was presented with his CBE by the Lieutenant-Governor of Western Australia. On 24 March that year, Brownell retired from the RAAF on medical grounds. He had in any case been slated for early retirement, along with other senior officers and veterans of the First World War, to make way for the advancement of younger and equally capable officers.
Following his retirement from the Air Force, Brownell was made a partner of S. G. Brearley & Co., a stockbroking firm located in Perth. In 1951, he became chairman of the associated sporting committee of the National Fitness Council of Western Australia; he served in this role until 1967. Aged 79, Brownell died at Subiaco, Western Australia, on 12 April 1974 and was accorded a funeral with full Air Force honours. Brownell's autobiography, From Khaki to Blue, was posthumously published by the Military Historical Society of Australia in 1978.
|
42,838,617 |
SMS Körös
| 1,153,745,092 |
River monitor built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy
|
[
"1892 ships",
"Körös-class river monitors",
"Maritime incidents in April 1941",
"Maritime incidents in June 1944",
"Navy of the Independent State of Croatia",
"Riverine warfare",
"Scuttled vessels",
"Ships built in Austria-Hungary",
"Ships of the Royal Yugoslav Navy",
"Ships sunk by mines",
"World War I monitors",
"World War I naval ships of Austria-Hungary",
"World War II monitors",
"World War II naval ships of Yugoslavia"
] |
SMS Körös () was the name ship of the Körös-class river monitors built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Completed in 1892, the ship was part of the Danube Flotilla, and fought various Allied forces from Belgrade down the Danube to the Black Sea during World War I. After brief service with the Hungarian People's Republic at the end of the war, she was transferred to the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), and renamed Morava. She remained in service throughout the interwar period, although budget restrictions meant she was not always in full commission.
During the World War II German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Morava was the flagship of the 2nd Mine Barrage Division, and operated on the River Tisza. She fought off attacks by the Luftwaffe, and shot down one enemy aircraft, but was forced to withdraw to Belgrade. Due to high river levels and low bridges, navigating monitors was difficult, and she was scuttled by her crew on 11 April. Some of her crew tried to escape cross-country towards the southern Adriatic coast, but most surrendered on 14 April. The remainder made their way to the Bay of Kotor, which was captured by the Italian XVII Corps on 17 April. She was later raised by the Navy of the Independent State of Croatia, an Axis puppet state, and continued in service as Bosna until June 1944, when she struck a mine and sank.
## Description and construction
The name ship of the Körös-class river monitors was built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy by H. Schönichen. She was laid down at Budapest on 30 March 1890. Körös and her sister ship SMS Szamos doubled the size of Austria-Hungary's Danube Flotilla. The two monitors each had an overall length of 54 m (177 ft 2 in), a beam of 9 m (29 ft 6 in), and a normal draught of 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in). Her displacement was 448 tonnes (441 long tons), and her crew consisted of 77 officers and enlisted men. The ship was powered using steam generated by two Yarrow boilers driving two triple-expansion steam engines, and carried 54 tonnes (53 long tons) of coal. Her engines were rated at 1,200 ihp (890 kW) and she was designed to reach a top speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).
Körös was armed with two single gun turrets of 120 mm (4.7 in)/L35 fore and aft, two superfiring 66 mm (2.6 in)/L42 anti-aircraft guns protected by gun shields on the superstructure fore and aft, and two machine guns. Her main guns fired a 26 kg (57 lb) armour-piercing, high explosive, shrapnel or fragmentation shell to a maximum range of 8.2 km (5.1 mi) at an elevation of 20°. They could depress to −6° and elevate to +25°. Her armour consisted of a belt and bulkheads 50 mm (2.0 in) thick, deck armour 19 mm (0.75 in) thick, and conning tower and gun turret armour 75 mm (3.0 in) thick. The armour was produced by the Witkowitz steel works, in Moravia. She was launched on 5 February 1892 and commissioned on 21 April of the same year. Her sister ship Szamos was completed in 1893, and was identical except for 50 mm (2.0 in) armour on her conning tower.
## Career
### Commissioning and World War I
#### Serbian campaign
At the start of World War I, Körös was based at Zemun, just upstream from Belgrade on the Danube. Her commander was Linienschiffsleutnant (LSL) Josef Meusburger, and she was accompanied by another three monitors and three patrol boats. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July 1914, and that night the flotilla fired the first shots of the war against fortifications at the Zemun–Belgrade railway bridge over the river Sava and on the Topčider Hill, although Körös was not initially involved. The Serbs were outgunned by the monitors, and by August began to receive assistance from the Russians. This support included the supply and emplacement of naval guns and the establishment of river obstacles and mines.
The Austro-Hungarian base at Zemun was briefly evacuated due to a Serbian counterattack in September. On 28 September, Körös, along with the monitor SMS Temes, a patrol boat and a minesweeper, broke through the minefields on the Sava near Belgrade and pushed upstream to join the fighting near Šabac. In November, French artillery support arrived in Belgrade, endangering the monitor's anchorage. The stalemate continued until December 1914 when the Serbs briefly evacuated Belgrade in the face of an Austro-Hungarian assault, although Körös did not support this action. After less than two weeks, the Austro-Hungarians had to withdraw from Belgrade, and it was soon recaptured by the Serbs with Russian and French assistance. Körös continued in action against Serbia and her allies at Belgrade until December, when the base of the Danube Flotilla was withdrawn north to Petrovaradin for the winter.
In January 1915, British artillery arrived in Belgrade, further bolstering its defences. On 22 April 1915, a British picket boat that had been brought overland by rail from Salonika was used to attack the Danube Flotilla anchorage at Zemun, firing two torpedoes without success. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in September 1915, and the Serbian Army soon faced an overwhelming Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian ground invasion. On 7 October, the Austro-Hungarian 3rd Army attacked Belgrade, and Körös, along with the majority of the flotilla, was heavily engaged in support of the crossings near the Belgrade Fortress and Ada Ciganlija island. During the final river crossing and support of the resulting bridgehead, the ship provided close support, during which her stack was hit and damaged. The following day, Körös assisted SMS Enns when the latter took a direct hit and began to take on water.
Following the capture of Belgrade, the flotilla sailed downstream to Orșova near the Hungarian–Romanian border and waited for the lower Danube to be swept for mines. It then escorted a series of munitions convoys down the Danube to Lom, from where they were transferred to the Bulgarian railway system for shipment to the Ottoman Empire.
#### Romanian campaign
In November 1915, Körös and the other monitors were assembled at Ruschuk, Bulgaria. The position of Romania was uncertain; the Central Powers were aware that the Romanians were negotiating to enter the war on the opposing side of the Entente. To protect the Danube's 480 km (300 mi) border between Romania and Bulgaria, the flotilla established a sheltered base in the Belene Canal. When the Romanians entered the war on 27 August 1916, the monitors were again at Rustschuk, and were immediately attacked by three improvised torpedo boats operating out of the Romanian river port of Giurgiu. The torpedoes that were fired missed the monitors but struck a lighter loaded with fuel. The Second Monitor Division, consisting of Körös and three other monitors, was tasked with shelling Giurgiu. This bombardment set fire to oil storage tanks as well as the railway station and magazines, and sank several Romanian lighters. While the attack was underway, the First Monitor Division escorted supply ships back to the Belene anchorage. The Körös and her companions then destroyed two Romanian patrol boats and an improvised minelayer on their way back to Belene. This was followed by forays of the monitors both east and west of Belene, during which both Turnu Măgurele and Zimnicea were shelled.
In April 1918, Körös, along with three other monitors, two patrol boats and a tug, were formed into Flottenabteilung Wulff (Fleet Division Wulff) under the command of Flottenkapitän (Fleet Captain) Olav Wulff. Flottenabteilung Wulff was sent through the mouth of the Danube and across the Black Sea to Odessa, where it spent several months supporting the Austro-Hungarian troops enforcing the peace agreement with Russia. It returned to the Danube at the end of August, and was anchored at Brăila on 12 September. On 16 October, Körös and the rest of the First Monitor Division sailed from Brăila to Belene. For several weeks the Danube Flotilla was engaged in protecting Austro-Hungarian troops retreating towards Budapest, fighting French and irregular Serbian forces as they withdrew; the flotilla arrived in Belene on 6 November.
### Interwar period and World War II
#### 1919–41
After the Armistice of Villa Giusti signed by the Austro-Hungarians on 3 November 1918, Körös was operated by the navy of the Hungarian People's Republic between 6 November and 13 December. She was then crewed by sailors of the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSCS, later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) in 1918–19. Under the terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye concluded in September 1919, Körös was transferred to the KSCS along with a range of other vessels, including three other river monitors, but was officially handed over to the KSCS Navy and renamed Morava in 1920. Her sister ship Szamos was dismantled and used as a pontoon. In 1925–26, Morava was refitted, but by the following year only two of the four river monitors of the KSCS Navy were being retained in full commission at any time. In 1932, the British naval attaché reported that Yugoslav ships were engaging in little gunnery training, and few exercises or manoeuvres, due to reduced budgets.
#### 1941–45
On 6 April 1941, when the World War II German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia began, Morava was based at Stara Kanjiža on the Tisza river, as the flagship of the 2nd Mine Barrage Division. This force was responsible for the Hungarian border, and came under the operational control of the 7th Infantry Division Potiska. The remainder of the 2nd Mine Barrage Division consisted of the river tug R-XXI, the river transport Senta, and a few mobilised customs motorboats, based further south on the Tisza at Senta. On 7 April, Morava withdrew to Senta, where she was attacked by German aircraft. According to her commander, Poručnik bojnog broda Božidar Aranđelović, her crew shot down one German aircraft and captured a Luftwaffe Oberstleutnant. On 10 April, Morava was ordered to withdraw to conform with the retreat of the 2nd Army Group of the Royal Yugoslav Army from Bačka and Baranja. On the evening of 11 April, Morava anchored at the confluence of the Danube and Sava near Belgrade, along with her fellow monitors Vardar and Sava, and Aranđelović took command of the flotilla. The three captains conferred, and decided to scuttle their vessels due to the high water levels in the rivers and low bridges, which meant insufficient clearance for the monitors to navigate freely. The crews of the monitors were transshipped to two tugboats, but when one of the tugboats was passing under a railway bridge, demolition charges on the bridge exploded prematurely and the bridge fell onto the tugboat. Of the 110 officers and men aboard the vessel, 95 were killed.
After the scuttling of the monitors, around 450 officers and men from the Morava and various other riverine vessels gathered at Obrenovac, and armed only with personal weapons and some machine guns stripped from the scuttled vessels, started towards the Bay of Kotor in the southern Adriatic in two groups. The larger of the two groups only made it as far as Sarajevo on 14 April before they surrendered. The smaller group made their way to the Bay of Kotor, and was captured by the Italian XVII Corps on 17 April.
Morava was later raised and repaired by the navy of an Axis puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia, in which she served as Bosna. She served alongside her fellow monitor Sava, which had also been raised and repaired, but retained her name. Along with six captured motorboats and ten auxiliary vessels, they made up the riverine police force of the Croatian state. Bosna was part of the 2nd Patrol Group of the River Flotilla Command, headquartered at Zemun. She struck a mine near Bosanski Novi on the River Una and sank in June 1944. The following year she was raised and broken up.
|
1,806,520 |
Grant's Canal
| 1,171,608,063 |
Attempted canal in Louisiana, United States of America
|
[
"1862 establishments in Louisiana",
"Buildings and structures in Madison Parish, Louisiana",
"Canals in Louisiana",
"Louisiana in the American Civil War",
"Vicksburg National Military Park",
"Vicksburg campaign"
] |
Grant's Canal (also known as Williams's Canal) was an incomplete military effort to construct a canal through De Soto Point in Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi. During the American Civil War, United States Navy forces attempted to capture the Confederate-held city of Vicksburg in 1862, but were unable to do so with army support. Union Brigadier General Thomas Williams was sent to De Soto Point with 3,200 men to dig a canal capable of bypassing the strong defenses around Vicksburg. Despite help from local plantation slaves, disease and falling river levels prevented Williams from successfully constructing the canal, and the project was abandoned until January 1863, when Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant took an interest in the project.
Grant attempted to resolve some of the issues inherent to the concept by moving the upstream entrance to a spot with a stronger current, but the heavy rains and flooding that broke a dam prevented the project from succeeding. Work was abandoned in March, and Grant eventually used other methods to capture Vicksburg, whose Confederate garrison surrendered on July 4, 1863. In 1876, the Mississippi River changed course to cut across De Soto Point, eventually isolating Vicksburg from the river, but the completion of the Yazoo Diversion Canal in 1903 restored Vicksburg's river access. Most of the canal site has since been destroyed by agriculture, but a small section survives. This section was donated by local landowners to the National Park Service and became part of Vicksburg National Military Park in 1990. A 1974 article in The Military Engineer calculated that the canal would likely have been successful if the dam at the downstream end of the canal had been opened.
## History
### Background
During the opening days of the American Civil War in 1861, Winfield Scott, Commanding General of the United States Army, developed the Anaconda Plan for defeating the Confederate States of America. A major part of this plan was controlling the Mississippi River, to cut the Confederacy in two and provide a supply outlet for northern goods to reach foreign markets. In early 1862, the Union Army defeated Confederate forces in several significant battles, including Shiloh, First Corinth, Fort Donelson, and Island Number Ten. The city of New Orleans, Louisiana, also fell to Union troops in late April. Between the capture of New Orleans and the battlefield victories, much of the Mississippi Valley was in Union hands. Flag Officer David Glasgow Farragut commanded the United States Navy elements that had been present at New Orleans, and took his ships upriver to the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which was considered to be strategically valuable as it connected the regions west of the Mississippi River with the eastern portions of the Confederacy. The naval force was accompanied by 1,500 Union infantrymen under the command of Brigadier General Thomas Williams. After reaching Vicksburg in mid-May, Farragut unsuccessfully demanded that the city surrender to his fleet. On May 20, the first Union shot towards Vicksburg was fired by USS Oneida, and more bombardments followed on May 26 and 28 before Farragut decided to fall back to New Orleans, a move that was politically unpopular. The decision to withdraw was the result of falling river levels threatening to strand the Union ships, a shortage of coal, and Farragut being ill.
Another attempt on the city was made in June. Williams again accompanied the expedition, this time with a 3,200-man force. Williams's infantrymen, Farragut's navy, and a group of ships armed with mortars commanded by Commodore David Dixon Porter left the city of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on June 20. They reached Vicksburg five days later. On June 26, Porter and Farragut's ships attempted to bombard the Confederate artillery batteries defending the city, but were unable to do so. Confederate return fire was ineffective due to most Union ships anchoring out of range of the Confederate guns, and the remainder being anchored in a location shielded by heavy vegetation. Two days later, Farragut ordered most of his ships (but not Porter's) to pass in front of the city's defenses to meet a fleet of Union ironclads that had traveled down the river from Memphis, Tennessee. Farragut's movement involved navigating around De Soto Point, a peninsula of land on the Louisiana side of the river, where the Mississippi River made a horseshoe-shaped meander. The Union ships suffered damage, but were able to pass the batteries. Farragut and the commander of the ironclads, Flag Officer Charles Davis, agreed that the navy could not capture the city without large numbers of army troops and that the needed number of infantrymen would not be released by the Union general-in-chief, Major General Henry Halleck, for the Vicksburg operations.
### 1862 attempt
In 1853, engineer Charles Ellet Jr. determined that the Mississippi was likely to cut across the narrow De Soto Point, leaving Vicksburg isolated on an oxbow lake. Williams selected a site for a canal to be built across the point in early June, and his men began digging on June 27, assisted by 1,200 local plantation slaves. These slaves had been impressed by Union raiding parties, although many had come willingly, having been told that they would be freed for their work. Williams intended to free them only if the canal was completed successfully and treated them harshly. As planned, the canal would have openings on the river 6 miles (10 km) upstream and 3.5 miles (6 km) downstream from Vicksburg. The canal's length was to be 1.25 miles (2 km) or 1.33 miles (2 km) with a width of 50 feet (20 m) and depth of 13 feet (4 m). While the path of the canal could conceivably have been as short as 0.75 miles (1 km), the longer route was chosen to stay further from Vicksburg's defenses.
If the plan worked as intended, the Mississippi would cut through the canal ditch, allowing Union ships to traverse the river without being fired on by the defenders of Vicksburg. It was also considered possible that the river would move from its old course through the canal cut, isolating Vicksburg from the river entirely. Progress was hampered by the falling level of the river and outbreaks of disease. The temperature in the area sometimes reached as high as 110 °F (40 °C), potable water was scarce, and the mosquito-ridden swamps in the area were havens for disease. Malaria, dysentery, and scurvy were common among the workers, and supplies of quinine to treat malaria ran out. Disease was further promoted by soldiers dumping raw sewage into the Mississippi River, which was also their source of drinking water.
The geology of the ground where the canal was dug was thought to consist of about 11 feet (3 m) of clay with sand below. A river current was expected to cut through the sand, but not the clay, so the clay needed to be entirely removed before the canal was opened to the river. The river was falling almost 1 foot (0.3 m) a day, although reports from upriver at St. Louis noted that the Mississippi was rising further north. This rise did not manifest itself downstream where the canal project was. A rise in the river's level was expected in June, but this never happened. By July 4, 1862, the cut was only about 7 feet (2 m) deep. A week later, the depth of the canal was 1.5 feet (0.5 m) below the surface level of the river and on July 17 the canal had a depth of 13 feet (4 m) and a width of 18 feet (5 m), although the Mississippi River's level had fallen to below the trough of the canal. A steamboat was set up near the opening of the canal in a failed attempt to force water into the canal. The workers dug even deeper, but the walls of the canal collapsed in several places.
As the conditions deteriorated further, Williams decided that the canal was no longer feasible and ordered his men from De Soto Point, ending work on July 24. His command had been reduced to 700 or 800 healthy soldiers by disease. The civilian workers suffered from sickness as well. With the withdrawal of the infantrymen being at least part of his decision, Davis withdrew his ironclads upriver to Helena, Arkansas. Farragut's ships also withdrew at this time, escorting the transports carrying Williams's infantrymen back to Baton Rouge. These deep-draft naval vessels moved downstream with difficulty. When Confederate soldiers later examined the area where the canal construction had taken place, they found 600 graves and 500 abandoned African Americans, most of whom were ill. The other African-American workers had been either forcibly returned to their owners, or given three days's rations and instructions to walk back to their homes. The ditch had reached a depth of 13 feet (4 m) and was 18 feet (5 m) wide, but these dimensions were not enough to allow navigation because the river level had fallen below the ditch's trough. Although the proposed bypass of Vicksburg had failed, the diggers did destroy part of the Vicksburg, Shreveport and Texas Railroad, severing an important Confederate rail connection across the Mississippi.
### 1863 attempt
In late November 1862, Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant began an offensive aimed at Vicksburg. He took 40,000 soldiers into northern Mississippi while Major General William T. Sherman made an amphibious thrust down the Mississippi towards Vicksburg. Both wings were forced to withdraw, Grant's after his supply line was wrecked by the Holly Springs Raid and West Tennessee Raids and Sherman's after a repulse at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou. Sherman's men fell back to Milliken's Bend, Louisiana, Sherman being superseded in command by Major General John McClernand. The two generals took the force north to Arkansas Post, Arkansas, and captured a Confederate fort in early January in the Battle of Arkansas Post. Grant then ordered Sherman to take a force down to the old canal site and resume work on the project. Overall command of the move against Vicksburg was taken over by Grant in late January 1863, although the lead elements of his force had already reached the area. A direct attack on Vicksburg was impractical; the strength of the Confederate defenses had been improved since Farragut's campaign the previous year, the terrain north of the city in the Mississippi Delta was impassable to an army, and a withdrawal to Memphis to make a second overland attempt would be publicly viewed as a defeat and would be politically disastrous.
Despite some urging from a Vicksburg newspaper editor, Confederate troops had never filled in the traces of the canal. The steamboat Catahoula was sent to the area in January 1863 by the Union, under the command of a Lieutenant Wilson, to scout the remains of the canal cut. Both the captain of the vessel and a newspaperman on board reported that while there was water standing in the canal, it was stagnant and that the cut needed significant work before large ships such as the United States Navy ironclads could pass through it. Union Colonel Josiah W. Bissell, who had prior engineering experience, surveyed the canal on January 10 and noted that it was still in similar shape as to how Williams left it. All of the previously excavated dirt had been thrown to the side facing Vicksburg, which provided some protection from Confederate fire and made it easier to widen the canal, as the side to be widened did not contain excess debris. Although he was initially unconvinced by the project, Grant ordered that the digging resume after making some adjustments to the plans of the canal. Visiting Union officers later found that the water was only 2 feet (0.6 m) in the ditch and also noted the lack of a current, although depths of up to 8 feet (2 m) and widths up to 12 feet (4 m) were also reported. Tree stumps would need to be removed from the canal sides and a levee would need to be constructed to prevent canal water from flooding into where Union camps would be located.
The project had the support of President Abraham Lincoln. The first workers were assigned to the canal project on January 23. The canal was widened to 16 feet (5 m) within a week, but because there was water in the canal, the newly widened points only had a depth down to the water level. The use of dredging boats would have been a solution to this problem, but none were available at the time. Water depth was increased to 5 feet (2 m), and in hopes of creating greater erosion in the canal, soldiers were ordered to dig pits along its sides. Another attempt to use a steamboat to push water into the canal was made, but again failed. By the end of the month, Grant was beginning to think that the canal project would not succeed, but continued with the construction. Captain Frederick E. Prime was placed in command of the effort on January 28. Outbreaks of disease struck again, and the levees around the project frequently broke, flooding parts of the canal. The diggers were also exposed to Confederate artillery fire. By now, the construction had been divided into 160-foot (50 m) sections, with the intention of making each section 6 feet (2 m) deep and 60 feet (20 m) wide. As these early attempts at working on the canal failed to achieve significant progress, Grant ordered that the upstream end of the canal be moved to a point 200 yards (200 m) upstream to allow for a stronger current to flow into the ditch.
Rains hampered the project by exposing poorly buried graves from the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou and turning the soil to a consistency Sherman described as "wet, almost water". Prime determined that the only way to deepen the canal would be to drain it, so he ordered any holes in the levees surrounding the canal plugged with dirt-filled gunny sacks. This process was completed by February 9, although it was noted that evidence of current-based erosion was finally sighted shortly before the canal was closed off. By February 12, the new entrance, which was constructed by 550 African Americans, had dimensions of 60 feet (20 m) across and 4 feet (1 m) deep. Water still kept rising through February 16, so one of the levees closing the canal off from the campsites was opened to drain the excess water into an unused area. On the 19th, a steam-powered sump pump was completed; the sump itself had been completed ten days earlier. That same day, 1,000 African American laborers were sent from Memphis to work on the project. In mid-February, the work assignments were rearranged so that each regiment had a 150-yard (100 m) section. The regiments were in turn subdivided so that an individual soldier only worked on the canal for two hours a day; units competed against each other in the construction work. Though many soldiers were theoretically available to work on the project, only 3,000 or 4,000 were assigned to it due to lack of tools. About 2,000 civilian laborers also worked on the canal during the life of the project. Two dredging boats were finally secured on February 16, the first arriving on March 1.
Union newspapers criticized the project, and the Confederates built new artillery emplacements capable of enfilading most of the canal. Optimism among those working on the canal grew as progress was made. Grant sent a message to Halleck on March 4 stating that the canal was only days from completion, and the second dredging boat arrived the next day. On March 7, the dam holding the upstream end of the canal failed, inundating the canal. The opening in the levee expanded until it was 150 feet (50 m) wide, and water flooded some of the Union campsites. This breach was a disaster for the project. Though the inflow of water had flooded the area, it had not produced any scouring effect. Prime ordered the lower end of the canal blown and attempted to plug the upper breach with a coal barge. It took days of frantic work to plug the hole. By March 12, the upper half of the canal only needed some widening and stump and tree removal, while the lower half required little widening but still some stump removal. Aside from those issues, the only remaining work to be done was filling a breach in one of the canal's side levees. The flooding had caused the cut to begin to fill with sediment, and the two dredging boats, Hercules and Sampson, were sent to try to clear the channel, but they came under Confederate artillery fire. With the soldiers flooded out and forced to higher ground elsewhere, the dredges continued the work. By March 19, Confederate fire had become accurate enough that the dredges could only operate under the cover of night. Grant wrote on March 22 that he doubted that the canal would be useful, and noted that Confederate artillery had been positioned to fire down the exit end of the canal. The dredges were withdrawn two days later. Their civilian operators had balked at working under enemy fire, stating that being shot at was not part of their contract. On March 27, Halleck was informed that the project had ended. Grant's canal had been a failure. The canal had reached a width of about 60 feet (20 m) and a depth of about 9 feet (3 m) to 12 feet (4 m). Grant viewed the canal construction as a good way to prevent idleness among his soldiers, but eventually conceived another way to get troops past Vicksburg. In Sherman's words, the canal was "labor lost".
## Aftermath
A similar attempt, known as the Duckport Canal, was made 3 miles (5 km) to the north. Near Duckport, Louisiana, a 1 mile (2 km) channel that was 40 feet (10 m) wide and 7 feet (2 m) deep was to be dug to connect the Mississippi to Walnut Bayou. It was hoped that this would provide a navigable channel to the Mississippi at New Carthage, Louisiana, downstream from Vicksburg. On April 13, a levee was blasted to open the channel, but Grant decided that the project would take too long to be viable, although the work still continued with hopes of using the Duckport cut as a future supply channel. The transport Silver Wave attempted to navigate the lower part of the path, but was unable to do so because of low water and submerged trees obstructing the path. The Mississippi began to fall, and low waters doomed the Duckport Canal; by April 27, there was only 6 inches (20 cm) of water where the cut entered Walnut Bayou. Another digging project was made with the Lake Providence Canal. Located 40 miles (64 km) to the north of Vicksburg, the Lake Providence project was intended to produce a water route into the Red River, and bypass Vicksburg that way. Work began on it while the canal at De Soto Point was still being worked on; the Lake Providence cut was expected to be much easier. Union troops cut levees on March 4 and March 17, but the project encountered difficulties with trees blocking the path, and Grant had the attention given there redirected elsewhere before a needed sawing machine arrived. Other failed attempts to get around Vicksburg were the Steele's Bayou Expedition and the Yazoo Pass Expedition, two attempts to weave through the waterways to the north of the city.
Grant decided to land troops on the Mississippi side of the river below Vicksburg in April. After pushing aside Confederate resistance at the battles of Port Gibson and Raymond, Grant's soldiers moved against Jackson, Mississippi, and captured the city from a Confederate army assembled to support Vicksburg. The Confederate defenders of Vicksburg had moved east from the city but were defeated at the Battle of Champion Hill on May 16. By May 18, Grant's men had reached Vicksburg. Frontal attacks against the city on May 19 and 22 failed with significant losses, and the city was placed under siege. The siege of Vicksburg continued until the Confederate defenders surrendered on July 4. After Vicksburg surrendered, the Confederate garrison of Port Hudson, Louisiana, followed suit, giving the Union full control of the Mississippi River. The fall of Vicksburg was a decisive blow to the Confederacy and directly contributed to the eventual Confederate defeat.
In April 1876, the Mississippi River changed course, cutting through De Soto Point and eventually isolating Vicksburg from the riverfront after the oxbow lake formed by the course change became cut off from the river. Vicksburg would not be a river town again until the completion of the Yazoo Diversion Canal in 1903. The natural path was only about 1.5 miles (2 km) away from where Grant's Canal had been attempted. Most of the canal path has since been destroyed by agriculture, but a small section still remains. The owners of the tract donated it to the National Park Service and it was added to Vicksburg National Military Park in 1990. Union African American soldiers who fought at the battles of Milliken's Bend and Goodrich's Landing are also commemorated at the site. A monument to the 9th Connecticut Infantry Regiment was also dedicated at the site in 2008. The National Park Service unit is located in Madison Parish, Louisiana.
### Assessment
The historians William L. Shea and Terrence J. Winschel suggest that by the end of the project, Grant was only continuing the canal to please project supporter Lincoln and to distract the Confederates. At the time of the 1863 attempt, Grant was not particularly popular in the Union, and newspaperman Sylvanus Cadwallader wrote that he believed Grant could only keep his command by occupying his soldiers with activity. Some outside observers did view Grant's Canal as the best option for taking the city, and it received press attention in the Union, Confederacy, and Europe. Ed Bearss describes Grant's canal efforts as showing his willingness to try any available opportunity. Likewise, the historian Shelby Foote included the canal as one of seven different failed attempts made before Grant successfully took Vicksburg. A 1974 article published in The Military Engineer calculated that if the dam at the downstream end of the canal had been opened along with the breach in the upper canal, then a current strong enough to successfully erode through the canal cut would have probably been produced. Writer Kevin Dougherty believes that Grant's willingness to try various projects to get around the city had a side effect of confusing the Confederates. Engineer David F. Bastian suggests that the canal came close to success, and could have been successful if dredges had been obtained in January instead of March. He believes that using the dredges would have been more effective at widening and deepening the ditch than manual labor, and would have been less affected by rising river levels. The project would also have been completed quicker, allowing for time to reroute the downstream end of the canal away from the new Confederate batteries. If successful, the canal could have rendered Vicksburg moot by bypassing it. Historical consensus has nonetheless treated the project as impractical.
## See also
- Dutch Gap, a similar attempt in 1864 on the James River.
|
167,805 |
Gwen Stefani
| 1,168,862,610 |
American singer and songwriter (born 1969)
|
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Gwen Renée Stefani (/stəˈfɑːni/; born October 3, 1969) is an American musician. She is a co-founder, lead vocalist, and the primary songwriter of the band No Doubt, whose singles include "Just a Girl", "Spiderwebs", and "Don't Speak", from their 1995 breakthrough studio album Tragic Kingdom, as well as "Hey Baby" and "It's My Life" from later albums.
During the band's hiatus, Stefani embarked on a solo pop career in 2004 by releasing her debut studio album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Inspired by pop music from the 1980s, the album was a critical and commercial success. It spawned six singles, including "What You Waiting For?", "Rich Girl", "Hollaback Girl", and "Cool". "Hollaback Girl" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart while also becoming the first US download to sell one million copies. In 2006, Stefani released her second studio album, The Sweet Escape. Among the singles were "Wind It Up" and "The Sweet Escape", the latter of which was number three on the Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart of 2007. Her third solo album, This Is What the Truth Feels Like (2016), was her first solo album to reach number one on the Billboard 200 chart. Her fourth solo album and first full-length Christmas album, You Make It Feel Like Christmas, was released in 2017 and charted 19 tracks on Billboard's Holiday Digital Song Sales component chart in the United States. Stefani has released several singles with Blake Shelton, including "Nobody but You" (2020), which reached number 18 in the US.
Stefani has won three Grammy Awards. As a solo artist, she has received an American Music Award, a Brit Award, a World Music Award, and two Billboard Music Awards. In 2003, she debuted her clothing line L.A.M.B. and expanded her collection with the 2005 Harajuku Lovers line inspired by Japanese culture and fashion. Billboard magazine ranked Stefani the 54th most successful artist and 37th most successful Hot 100 artist of the 2000–2009 decade. VH1 ranked her 13th on their "100 Greatest Women in Music" list in 2012. Including her work with No Doubt, Stefani has sold more than 60 million records worldwide.
## Early life and education
Stefani was born on October 3, 1969, in Fullerton, California, and raised Catholic in nearby Anaheim, California. She was named after a stewardess in the 1968 novel Airport, and her middle name, Renée, comes from the Four Tops' 1968 version of the Left Banke's 1966 song "Walk Away Renée". Her father Dennis Stefani is Italian-American and worked as a Yamaha marketing executive. Her mother Patti (née Flynn) is Irish-American and worked as an accountant before becoming a homemaker. Stefani's parents were fans of folk music and exposed her to music by artists like Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris. Stefani has two younger siblings, Jill and Todd, and an older brother, Eric. Eric was the keyboardist for No Doubt before leaving the band to pursue a career in animation on The Simpsons.
She went to Loara High School, where she graduated in 1987. After high school, she spent less than a semester at Fullerton College, and then at California State University, Fullerton, dropping out in 1987 to pursue a music career.
## Career
### 1986–2004: Career beginnings and No Doubt
Her brother Eric introduced Gwen to 2 Tone music by Madness and the Selecter, and, in 1986, he invited her to provide vocals for No Doubt, a ska band he was forming. In 1991, the band was signed to Interscope Records. The band released its self-titled debut album in 1992, but its ska-pop sound was unsuccessful due to the popularity of grunge. Before the mainstream success of both No Doubt and Sublime, Stefani contributed guest vocals to "Saw Red" on Sublime's 1994 album Robbin' the Hood. Stefani rejected the aggressiveness of female grunge artists and cited Blondie singer Debbie Harry's combination of power and sex appeal as a major influence. No Doubt's third album, Tragic Kingdom (1995), which followed the self-released The Beacon Street Collection (1995), took more than three years to make. Five singles were released from Tragic Kingdom, including "Don't Speak", which led the Hot 100 Airplay year-end chart of 1997. Stefani left college for one semester to tour for Tragic Kingdom but did not return when touring lasted two and a half years. The album was nominated for a Grammy and sold more than 16 million copies worldwide by 2004. In late 2000, Rolling Stone magazine named her "the Queen of Confessional Pop".
During the time when No Doubt was receiving mainstream success, Stefani collaborated on the singles "You're the Boss" with the Brian Setzer Orchestra, "South Side" with Moby, and "Let Me Blow Ya Mind" with Eve. No Doubt released the less popular Return of Saturn in 2000, which expanded upon the new wave influences of Tragic Kingdom. Most of the lyrical content focused on Stefani's often rocky relationship with then-Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale and her insecurities, including indecision on settling down and having a child. The band's 2001 album, Rock Steady, explored more reggae and dancehall sounds, while maintaining the band's new wave influences. The album generated career-highest singles chart positions in the United States, and "Hey Baby" and "Underneath It All" received Grammy Awards. A greatest hits collection, The Singles 1992–2003, which includes a cover of Talk Talk's "It's My Life", was released in 2003. In 2002, Eve and Stefani won a Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for "Let Me Blow Ya Mind".
### 2004–2006: Solo debut and other ventures
Stefani's debut solo album, Love. Angel. Music. Baby., was released on November 12, 2004. The album features several collaborations with producers and other artists, including Tony Kanal, Tom Rothrock, Linda Perry, André 3000, Nellee Hooper, the Neptunes and New Order. Stefani created the album to modernize the music she had listened to in high school, and L.A.M.B. takes influence from a variety of music styles of the 1980s and early 1990s such as new wave, synthpop, and electro. Stefani's decision to use her solo career as an opportunity to delve further into pop music instead of trying "to convince the world of [her] talent, depth and artistic worth" was considered unusual. The album was described as "fun as hell but ... not exactly rife with subversive social commentary". The album debuted on the US Billboard 200 albums chart at number seven, selling 309,000 copies in its first week. L.A.M.B. reached multi-platinum status in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.
The first single from the album was "What You Waiting For?", which debuted atop the ARIA Singles Chart, charted at number 47 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and reached the top ten on most other charts. The song served to explain why Stefani produced a solo album and discusses her fears in leaving No Doubt for a solo career as well as her desire to have a baby. "Rich Girl" was released as the album's second single. A duet with rapper Eve, and produced by Dr. Dre, it is an adaptation of a 1990s pop song by British musicians Louchie Lou & Michie One, which itself is a very loose cover lyrically but closer melodically of "If I Were a Rich Man", from the musical Fiddler on the Roof. "Rich Girl" reached the US and UK top ten. The album's third single "Hollaback Girl" became Stefani's first US and second Australian number-one single; it reached top ten elsewhere. The song was the first US music download to sell more than one million copies, and its brass-driven composition remained popular throughout 2005. The fourth single "Cool" was released shortly following the popularity of its predecessor, reaching the top 20 in US and UK. The song's lyrics and its accompanying music video, filmed on Lake Como, depict Stefani's former relationship with Kanal. "Luxurious" was released as the album's fifth single, but did not perform as well as its predecessors. "Crash" was released in January 2006 as the album's sixth single in lieu of Love. Angel. Music. Baby.'s sequel, which Stefani postponed because of her pregnancy.
In 2004, Stefani showed interest in making film appearances and began auditioning for films such as Mr. & Mrs. Smith. She made her film debut playing Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator in 2004. Scorsese, whose daughter was a No Doubt fan, showed reciprocal interest in casting Stefani after seeing her picture from a Marilyn Monroe-inspired photo shoot for Teen Vogue in 2003. To prepare for the role, Stefani read two biographies and watched 18 of Harlow's films. Shooting her part took four to five days, and Stefani had few lines. Stefani lent her voice to the title character of the 2004 video game Malice, but the company opted not to use No Doubt band members' voices.
### 2006–2013: The Sweet Escape and return to No Doubt
Stefani's second studio album, The Sweet Escape, was released on December 1, 2006. Stefani continued working with Kanal, Perry, and the Neptunes, along with Akon and Tim Rice-Oxley from English rock band Keane. The album focuses more heavily on electronic and dance music for clubs than its predecessor. Its release coincided with the DVD release of Stefani's first tour, entitled Harajuku Lovers Live. Sia Michel wrote that it "has a surprisingly moody, lightly autobiographical feel ... but Stefani isn't convincing as a dissatisfied diva" and Rob Sheffield called the album a "hasty return" that repeats Love. Angel. Music. Baby. with less energy.
"Wind It Up", the album's lead single, used yodeling and an interpolation of The Sound of Music, and peaked in the top 10 in the US and the UK. The title track reached the top 10 in over 15 nations, including number two peaks in the US, Australia and the UK. To promote The Sweet Escape, Stefani was a mentor on the sixth season of American Idol and performed the song with Akon. The song earned her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. Three more singles were released from the album; "4 in the Morning", "Now That You Got It" which featured Damian Marley and "Early Winter". To promote the album, Stefani embarked on a worldwide tour, The Sweet Escape Tour, which covered North America, Europe, Asia and the Pacific and part of Latin America. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly on June 6, 2011, Stefani stated that she had no plans to continue work as a solo artist.
With Stefani promoting The Sweet Escape, No Doubt began work on a new album without her and planned to complete it after Stefani's Sweet Escape Tour was finished. In March 2008, the band started making posts concerning the progression of the album on their official fan forum. Stefani made a post on March 28, 2008, stating that songwriting had commenced but was slow on her end because she was pregnant with her second child. The Singles 1992–2003 became available on December 9, 2008, for the video game Rock Band 2. Adrian Young played drums on Scott Weiland's album "Happy" in Galoshes. No Doubt headlined the Bamboozle 2009 festival in May 2009, along with Fall Out Boy. The band completed a national tour in mid-2009.
The new album Push and Shove was released on September 25, preceded by the first single, "Settle Down", on July 16. The music video for "Settle Down" was directed by Sophie Muller (who has previously directed numerous music videos for No Doubt). Also around this time No Doubt were guest mentors for the UK version of The X-Factor. "Settle Down" peaked at 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 with the album peaking at number three on the US Billboard 200. On November 3, 2012, the band pulled its music video "Looking Hot" from the Internet after receiving complaints that it was insensitive towards Native Americans. In January 2013, No Doubt make a cameo appearance in a hot air ballon for the third season of Portlandia.
### 2014–2017: The Voice, This Is What the Truth Feels Like and You Make It Feel Like Christmas
On April 12, 2014, Stefani made a surprise appearance at the Coachella festival, where she joined Pharrell Williams onstage during his set to perform "Hollaback Girl". On April 29, it was officially confirmed that Stefani would join the seventh season of The Voice as a coach, replacing Christina Aguilera. Nine years after the previous time, she attended the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards. Stefani appears as a featured artist on Maroon 5's song "My Heart Is Open", co-written by Sia, from the band's album V, which was performed for the first time with Adam Levine and an orchestra at the 2015 Grammy Awards. Stefani also collaborated with Calvin Harris on the track "Together" from his album Motion.
On September 8, 2014, Stefani told MTV News during New York Fashion Week that she was working on both a No Doubt album and a solo album, and that she was working with Williams. Stefani released her comeback single "Baby Don't Lie" on October 20, 2014, co-written with producers Ryan Tedder, Benny Blanco, and Noel Zancanella. Billboard announced that her third studio album was set to be released in December with Benny Blanco serving as executive producer. In late October, "Spark the Fire", a new track from Stefani's third album, was released. The song was produced by Pharrell Williams. On November 23, the full song premiered online. Both "Baby Don't Lie" and "Spark the Fire" were later scrapped from Stefani's third album. On January 13, 2015, Stefani and Williams also recorded a song titled "Shine", for the Paddington soundtrack. Stefani and Sia worked together on a ballad, called "Start a War" which was expected to be released on Stefani's third studio album as well, but it was not included on the final cut. On July 10, 2015, American rapper Eminem featured Stefani on his single "Kings Never Die", from the Southpaw film soundtrack. The track debuted and peaked at number 80 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and matched first-week digital download sales of 35,000 copies.
On October 17, 2015, Stefani performed a concert as part of her MasterCard Priceless Surprises tour series at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, where she performed a new song about her breakup with ex-husband Gavin Rossdale, titled "Used to Love You". It was released as a download on October 20, 2015. The video was released the same day. The song was released to contemporary hit radio in the United States on October 27, 2015. The track is the first official single off her third solo album This Is What the Truth Feels Like, which she began working on in mid-2015. Stefani said much of the previous material she worked on in 2014 felt forced and inauthentic, the opposite of what she had originally wanted. The album's second single, "Make Me Like You", was released on February 12, 2016. This Is What the Truth Feels Like was released on March 18, 2016, and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 84,000 album-equivalent units sold in its first week, earning Stefani her first number-one album on the U.S. chart as a solo artist. To further promote the album, Stefani embarked on her This Is What the Truth Feels Like Tour with rapper Eve in the United States. Stefani voiced DJ Suki in the animated film Trolls, which was released on November 4, 2016. She is also included on five songs from the film's official soundtrack. Stefani twice performed as part of the "Final Shows" at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on October 29–30, before the venue's closure due to The Irvine Company not renewing the venue's land lease.
Stefani was interviewed for the documentary series The Defiant Ones, which was released in July 2017. The same month, she announced plans to release new music by the end of the year. In August, several song titles from the singer's sessions were published on GEMA's official website, suggesting that she may be recording a holiday album. The songwriting credits from the leaked tracks had Stefani collaborating with busbee, Blake Shelton, and Justin Tranter. The album, titled You Make It Feel Like Christmas, was released on October 6, 2017. Its title track, featuring guest vocals from Shelton, was digitally distributed on September 22, 2017, as the lead single. To promote the record, Stefani hosted Gwen Stefani's You Make It Feel Like Christmas, an NBC Christmas television special that aired on December 12, 2017.
### 2018–present: Las Vegas residency, The Voice, and new music
Stefani's first concert residency, titled Just a Girl: Las Vegas, began on June 27, 2018, at the Zappos Theater in Las Vegas. It was originally scheduled to conclude on May 16, 2020, but the final eight shows were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The show concluded on November 6, 2021. It was named after No Doubt's song "Just a Girl". Proceeds from the show (\$1 per ticket) were donated to the organization Cure4Kids. A deluxe edition of You Make It Feel Like Christmas was released in October 2018, and was promoted through the single "Secret Santa". On June 22, 2019, Stefani performed at the Machaca Fest in Fundidora Park.
Stefani replaced Adam Levine as a coach for The Voice's 17th season after Levine left the show after 16 seasons. Stefani was replaced by first-time coach Nick Jonas for the 18th season. She returned for her fifth season of The Voice's 19th season as a replacement for Jonas. Her finalist Carter Rubin was named the winner, giving her the first victory as a coach after her fifth attempt, and the ninth coach (and fourth female after Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys, and Kelly Clarkson) to do so. In November 2020, while the 19th season was still airing, it was announced Jonas would once again replace Stefani as a judge for season 20. In May 2022, it was announced that Stefani would return as a coach for the 22nd season, replacing Ariana Grande. In October 2022, it was announced that Stefani would depart the panel, once again, for the 23rd season. In May 2023, it was announced that Stefani would return to The Voice for the 24th season, replacing Kelly Clarkson.
On December 13, 2019, Stefani featured on Shelton's single "Nobody but You" from his compilation album Fully Loaded: God's Country. The song peaked at number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 and 49 on the Canadian Hot 100. On July 24, 2020, Stefani and Shelton released another single titled "Happy Anywhere" inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic. Stefani was initially scheduled to perform at Lollapalooza's 2020 festival, but it was postponed due to the pandemic. Lollapalooza was held as a four-day livestream in July and August 2020, but Stefani did not participate in it.
Stefani was featured on a Mark Ronson remix of Dua Lipa's "Physical", which is included on Lipa's remix album Club Future Nostalgia (2020). Stefani was initially approached to clear a "Hollaback Girl" sample for the Mr Fingers' remix of Lipa's "Hallucinate", and then asked to be a part of the "Physical" remix. To promote 2020 reissued edition of You Make It Feel Like Christmas, Stefani released a cover of "Sleigh Ride" as a single.
On December 7, 2020, Stefani released her comeback single "Let Me Reintroduce Myself". She followed this with a second single "Slow Clap" on March 11, 2021, which received a remix featuring Saweetie the following month. Stefani also teased other new music through her Instagram account, announcing she recorded two new tracks titled "When Loving Gets Old" and "Cry Happy". In 2022, she was a featured artist on Sean Paul's single "Light My Fire", alongside Shenseea, and appeared in its music video. In June 2023, she announced her first new solo single in over two years, "True Babe", which was released on June 23.
## Other ventures
Stefani made most of the clothing that she wore on stage with No Doubt, resulting in increasingly eclectic combinations. Stylist Andrea Lieberman introduced her to haute couture clothing, which led to Stefani launching a fashion line named L.A.M.B. in 2004. The line takes influence from a variety of fashions, including Guatemalan, Japanese, and Jamaican styles. The line achieved popularity among celebrities and is worn by stars such as Teri Hatcher, Nicole Kidman, and Stefani herself. In June 2005, she expanded her collection with the less expensive Harajuku Lovers line, which she referred to as "a glorified merchandise line", with varied products including a camera, mobile phone charms, and undergarments. In late 2006, Stefani released a limited edition line of dolls called "Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Fashion dolls". The dolls are inspired by the clothes Stefani and the Harajuku Girls wore while touring for the album.
In late 2007, Stefani launched a perfume, L, as a part of her L.A.M.B. collection of clothing and accessories. The perfume has high notes of sweet pea and rose. In September 2008, Stefani released a fragrance line as a part of her Harajuku Lovers product line. There are five different fragrances based on the four Harajuku Girls and Stefani herself called Love, Lil' Angel, Music, Baby and G (Gwen). As of January 2011, Stefani has become the spokesperson for L'Oréal Paris. In 2016, Urban Decay released a limited edition cosmetic collection in collaboration with Stefani. After needing to wear glasses, she began designing eyewear. In 2016, Gwen began releasing eyewear under her fashion label L.A.M.B. She also began releasing affordable eyewear under the label GX, with Tura Inc.
In 2014, Stefani announced the production of an animated series about her and the Harajuku Girls. Along with Vision Animation and Moody Street Kids, Stefani has helped create the show which features herself, Love, Angel, Music, and Baby as the band, HJ5, who fight evil whilst trying to pursue their music career. Mattel was the global toy licensee and the series itself, Kuu Kuu Harajuku was distributed worldwide by DHX Media.
In 2018, Stefani had reportedly filed to trademark P8NT for a potential line of "make-up, skincare, fragrance and hair dyes", and in March 2022, she launched a makeup brand called GXVE Beauty.
## Artistry
AXS called Stefani a "powerhouse" vocalist with an "incredible" range. The New York Times considered Stefani's vocals "mannered" and commended her for "kick[ing] her vibrato addiction". IGN described Stefani as having a "unique vocal prowess". The Chicago Tribune stated that Stefani had a "brash alto".
Stefani's debut album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. took influence from a variety of 1980s genres, which included electropop, new wave, dance-rock, hip hop, R&B, soul, and disco music. Stefani cited early Madonna, Lisa Lisa, Club Nouveau, Prince, New Order and the Cure as major influences for the album. Several of the album's tracks were designed for clubs, and contained electro beats meant for dancing. Referencing fashion and wealth in the album, the singer name-drops several designers who she considered inspirations in her personal career, such as John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood. Her second studio album The Sweet Escape resembles musically its predecessor while exploring more modern pop sounds, dabbling heavily into genres such as dance-pop and rap. It carried on the same themes developed in Love. Angel. Music. Baby., and was criticized for doing so.
This Is What the Truth Feels Like, the singer's third album, continued Stefani's endeavors with the pop genre, while incorporating music from a variety of other genres including reggae, disco, and dancehall, as well as the use of guitars. Stefani's lyrics shifted towards events that had recently occurred in her personal life, such as her divorce from Rossdale, and new relationship with Shelton. The singer stated her album was more about forgiveness than revenge.
## Public image
Stefani began wearing a bindi in the mid-1990s after attending several family gatherings with Tony Kanal, who is of Indian heritage. During No Doubt's breakthrough, Stefani wore the forehead decoration in several of the band's music videos and briefly popularized the accessory in 1997. Since the 1995 music video for "Just a Girl", Stefani has been known for her midriff and frequently wears tops that expose it. Stefani's makeup design generally includes light face powder, bright red lipstick, and arched eyebrows; she wrote about the subject in a song titled "Magic's in the Makeup" for No Doubt's Return of Saturn, asking "If the magic's in the makeup/Then who am I?". Stefani is a natural brunette, but her hair has not been its natural color since she was in ninth grade. Since late 1994, she has usually had platinum blonde hair. Stefani discussed this in the song "Platinum Blonde Life" on Rock Steady and played original blonde bombshell Jean Harlow in the 2004 biopic The Aviator. She dyed her hair blue in 1998 and pink in 1999, when she appeared on the cover of Return of Saturn with pink hair.
In 2006, Stefani modified her image, inspired by that of Michelle Pfeiffer's character Elvira Hancock in the 1983 film Scarface. The reinvented image included a symbol consisting of two back-to-back 'G's, which appears on a diamond-encrusted key she wears on a necklace and which became a motif in the promotion of The Sweet Escape. Stefani raised concerns in January 2007 about her rapid weight loss following her pregnancy. She later stated that she had been on a diet since the sixth grade to fit in size 4 clothing. A wax figure of Stefani was unveiled at Madame Tussauds Las Vegas at The Venetian on September 22, 2010. The release of Stefani's first solo album brought attention to her entourage of four Harajuku Girls, who appear in outfits influenced by Gothic Lolita fashion, and are named for the area around the Harajuku Station of Tokyo. Stefani's clothing also took influence from Japanese fashion, in a style described as a combination between Christian Dior and Japan. The dancers are featured in her music videos, press coverage, and on the album cover for Love. Angel. Music. Baby., with a song named for and dedicated to them on the album. They were also featured in, and the namesake for, Stefani's Harajuku Lovers Tour. Forbes magazine reported that Stefani earned \$27 million between June 2007 to June 2008 for her tour, fashion line and commercials, making her the world's 10th highest paid music personality at the time.
## Awards and legacy
Throughout her career as a solo artist, Stefani has won several music awards, including one Grammy Award, four MTV Video Music Awards, one American Music Award, one Brit Award, and two Billboard Music Awards. With No Doubt, she has won two Grammy Awards. In 2005, Rolling Stone called her "the only true female rock star left on radio or MTV" and featured her on the magazine's cover. Stefani received the Style Icon Award at the first People Magazine Awards in 2014. In 2016, the singer was honored at the Radio Disney Music Awards with a Hero Award, which is given to artists based on their personal contributions to various charitable works.
Stefani has been referred to as a "Pop Princess" by several contemporary music critics. In 2012, VH1 listed the singer at the number thirteen on their list of "100 Greatest Women in Music". Stefani's work has influenced artists and musicians including Hayley Williams of Paramore, Best Coast, Kim Petras, Teddy Sinclair, Katy Perry, Charli XCX, Kesha, Ava Max, Marina Diamandis, Rita Ora, Keke Palmer, Bebe Rexha, Dua Lipa, the Stunners, Kelly Clarkson, Sky Ferreira, Kirstin Maldonado of Pentatonix, Olivia Rodrigo, and Cover Drive. The latter group, a quartet of Barbados musicians, claimed that both Stefani and No Doubt had helped influence their music, to which the lead singer of the group, Amanda Reifer, said that she would "pass out" if she ever met Stefani.
The lead single from Love. Angel. Music. Baby., "What You Waiting For?", was considered by Pitchfork to be one of Stefani's best singles, and would later place it at number sixteen on their "Top 50 Singles of 2004" list. "Hollaback Girl" from Love. Angel. Music. Baby. would go on to be the first song to digitally sell an excess of one million copies in the United States; it was certified platinum in both the United States and Australia, and peaked at number forty-one on Billboard's decade-end charts for 2000–09. Since its release in 2005, "Hollaback Girl" has been called Stefani's "signature song" by Rolling Stone.
## Philanthropy
Following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Stefani donated \$1 million to Save the Children's Japan Earthquake–Tsunami Children in Emergency Fund. Stefani also ran an auction on eBay from April 11 to 25, 2011, allowing participants to bid on vintage clothing items from her personal wardrobe and custom T-shirts designed and signed by her, as well as an admission to a private Harajuku-themed tea party hosted by her on June 7, 2011, at Los Angeles' first Japanese-style maid café and pop art space, Royal/T, with proceeds from the auction going to Save the Children's relief effort.
At the amfAR gala during the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, Stefani auctioned off the lacy black dress she wore at the event for charity, raising over \$125,000. A representative for designer Michael Angel, who helped Stefani with the design and worked as a stylist, said that Angel created the gown, not Stefani. In response, Angel released a statement confirming that the dress was designed by Stefani for L.A.M.B. to wear and be auctioned off at the amfAR gala. Stefani hosted a fundraiser with First Lady Michelle Obama in August 2012 at the singer's Beverly Hills home.
The singer-songwriter supports the LGBT community. When asked in a 2019 Pride Source interview about how she would react if one of her children came out as gay, Stefani stated "I would be blessed with a gay son; [...] I just want my boys to be healthy and happy. And I just ask God to guide me to be a good mother, which is not an easy thing at all."
## Personal life
Stefani began dating her bandmate Tony Kanal soon after he joined the band. She stated that she was heavily invested in that relationship, saying in 2005, "...all I ever did was look at Tony and pray that God would let me have a baby with him." The band almost split up when Kanal ended the relationship. Their break-up inspired Stefani lyrically, and many of Tragic Kingdom's songs, such as "Don't Speak", "Sunday Morning", and "Hey You!", chronicle the ups and downs of their relationship. Stefani co-wrote her song "Cool" about their relationship as friends for her 2004 debut solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby.
Stefani met Bush lead singer and guitarist Gavin Rossdale in 1995 when No Doubt and Bush performed at a holiday concert for radio station KROQ. They married on September 14, 2002, at St Paul's, Covent Garden in London. A second wedding was held in Los Angeles two weeks later. Stefani has three sons with Rossdale, born on May 26, 2006, August 21, 2008, and February 28, 2014. On August 3, 2015, Stefani filed for divorce from Rossdale, citing "irreconcilable differences". Their divorce was finalized on April 8, 2016, in which Rossdale agreed to the "unequal split" of their assets.
Stefani announced her relationship with Blake Shelton, country music artist and The Voice co-star, in November 2015. Stefani and Shelton have collaborated on music numerous times since becoming a couple. In 2015, the musicians co-wrote the song "Go Ahead and Break My Heart" as they navigated the beginning of their relationship. The duet was featured on Shelton's 2016 album, "If I'm Honest". In 2020, their duets "Nobody But You" and "Happy Anywhere" both reached No. 1 on the Billboard US Country Airplay chart. They also collaborated on the song "You Make It Feel Like Christmas", featured on Stefani's 2017 holiday album of the same name. The couple announced their engagement on October 27, 2020, and married at a chapel on July 3, 2021, at Shelton's Oklahoma ranch.
Stefani was diagnosed with dyslexia in 2020.
In a 2023 interview with Allure magazine, Stefani stated that her father's job had him frequently traveling between California and Japan for 18 years. Speaking about her relationship with Japanese culture, she explained that "That was my Japanese influence and that was a culture that was so rich with tradition, yet so futuristic [with] so much attention to art and detail and discipline and it was fascinating to me". She had visited Harajuku as an adult and referred to herself as a "super fan" of Japanese culture. In the same interview, Stefani commented that she was Japanese and "identifies not just with Japan's culture, but also with the Hispanic and Latinx communities of Anaheim, California." Her comments have garnered criticism of cultural appropriation, with interviewers and writers clarifying that Stefani, who is Irish-American and Italian-American, is not Japanese.
## Discography
### Solo discography
- Love. Angel. Music. Baby. (2004)
- The Sweet Escape (2006)
- This Is What the Truth Feels Like (2016)
- You Make It Feel Like Christmas (2017)
### No Doubt discography
- No Doubt (1992)
- The Beacon Street Collection (1995)
- Tragic Kingdom (1995)
- Return of Saturn (2000)
- Rock Steady (2001)
- Push and Shove (2012)
## Tours
### Headlining
- Harajuku Lovers Tour (2005)
- The Sweet Escape Tour (2007)
- This Is What the Truth Feels Like Tour (2016)
### Residency
- Gwen Stefani – Just a Girl (2018–2021)
### Promotional
- MasterCard Priceless Surprises Presents Gwen Stefani (2015–2016)
- Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre Final Shows (2016)
### Festivals
- Machaca Fest (2019)
## Filmography
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21st Massachusetts Infantry Regiment
| 1,161,310,204 |
American Civil War Union Army regiment
|
[
"1861 establishments in Massachusetts",
"Military units and formations disestablished in 1864",
"Military units and formations established in 1861",
"Units and formations of the Union Army from Massachusetts"
] |
The 21st Massachusetts Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It was organized in Worcester, Massachusetts and mustered into service on August 23, 1861.
After garrison duty at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, the regiment served with the Coast Division commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. The Coast Division was deployed in January 1862 for operations on the coast of North Carolina, and participated in the Battle of Roanoke Island and the Battle of New Bern among other engagements. Burnside's division was recalled to Virginia in July 1862. The 21st Massachusetts Infantry was then attached to the Army of the Potomac and participated in several of the largest battles of the Civil War, including the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Antietam, and the Battle of Fredericksburg. The most devastating engagement of the war for the 21st was the Battle of Chantilly, fought on September 1, 1862, during which the unit suffered 35 percent casualties. From March 1863 to January 1864, the 21st served with Burnside in the Department of the Ohio, seeing action in Kentucky and eastern Tennessee. In May 1864, the regiment rejoined the Army of the Potomac, participating in Lt. Gen. Ulysses Grant's Overland campaign and the siege of Petersburg. The regiment was a favorite of Clara Barton, the famed battlefield nurse, who was also from Worcester County, Massachusetts.
By the end of its three years of service, the 21st Massachusetts Infantry had been reduced from 1,000 men to fewer than 100. Of these losses, 152 were killed in action or died from wounds received in action, approximately 400 were discharged due to wounds, 69 were taken prisoner, and approximately 300 were discharged due to disease, resignation, or desertion. Those of the 21st who chose to re-enlist at the end of their initial three-year commitment were eventually consolidated with the 36th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment on October 21, 1864.
## Organization and early duty
Following the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861 (the first major engagement of the war and a disastrous defeat for the untested Union army), citizens of the northern states began to realize that the Civil War would not end quickly. Additional troops would be needed beyond the 75,000 volunteers that had been called out for 90 days of service. As a result, over the summer of 1861, volunteers rushed to enlist for a term of three years. The 21st Massachusetts Infantry Regiment was among the "three-year regiments" organized after the First Battle of Bull Run.
The regiment was formed during July and August 1861. The designated camp of assembly was the Agricultural Fair Grounds in Worcester. The majority of the companies were from Worcester County with nearly every town in that county represented on the regiment's rolls. Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin Counties were also represented.
The first commanding officer of the 21st was Col. Augustus Morse, who was involved in the comb making industry in Leominster, Massachusetts and had been a major general in the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia prior to the war. According to Charles Walcott, the regimental historian, despite Morse's decades of experience with the State Militia, he was, "entirely destitute of soldierly enthusiasm or spirit, wonderfully ignorant of military drill and maneuvres, and a wretched disciplinarian."
The regiment, originally numbering slightly more than 1,000 men, departed Worcester on August 23, 1861. They were armed with inferior smoothbore muskets that had been converted from flintlock to percussion lock. After a brief, but tense, three-day encampment in Baltimore, the regiment moved to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, arriving on August 30. The regiment garrisoned the Naval Academy for four months. It was a comfortable post. Maj. William S. Clark of the 21st wrote that the regiment was "delightfully situated, enjoying the very romance of war."
During their stay in Annapolis, the men of 21st assisted in the escape of a slave belonging to Maryland Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks. While the slave was hidden in a chimney in one of the Naval Academy barracks, Governor Hicks's repeated demands for his return were refused by the officers of the regiment.
On December 20, 1861, the 21st was assigned to the Coast Division commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside for operations in North Carolina. The 21st was the first regiment selected by Brig. Gen. Jesse Reno for his brigade. The 21st Massachusetts Infantry would gain a great respect and affection for Reno, who first led their brigade and later the IX Corps of which the 21st was a part.
## North Carolina
As the regiment prepared for departure, Colonel Augustus Morse decided to remain at the Naval Academy, feeling that garrison duty was, according to historian James Bowen, "more to his taste." Lt. Col. Albert Maggi, an Italian by birth who had served under Giuseppe Garibaldi, took command of the regiment on January 2, 1862. Maggi had been openly insubordinate to Morse due to the latter's lack of military discipline. His assumption of command, as well as the issue of new Enfield rifled muskets, improved the morale of the regiment.
The 21st, about 960 strong, boarded the steamer Northerner on January 6, 1862. The fleet transporting Burnside's North Carolina Expedition encountered harsh weather off the coast of Cape Hatteras. Prolonged poor weather and the shallowness of Hatteras Inlet resulted in weeks of delay as the fleet struggled to enter Pamlico Sound. Finally, just as most of the vessels began to run low on potable water, the fleet entered the sound and made for Roanoke Island on February 5, 1862.
### Battle of Roanoke Island
Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan had ordered Burnside to make Roanoke Island his first target. Capture of the island would allow control of both Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds, opening up a possible southern invasion route to Richmond. Coordinating with a naval flotilla commanded by Admiral Louis M. Goldsborough, Burnside launched an amphibious assault (one of the first of the Civil War) resulting in the Battle of Roanoke Island on February 7 and 8, 1862. After landing, the 21st spent a cold, wet night on picket duty. On February 8, it joined in the assault on the Confederate fort at the center of the island. Moving through swamps and knee-deep water, Reno's brigade, including the 21st, advanced around the Union left flank on the west side of the fort. After firing steadily on the fort for some time and taking moderate casualties, the 21st was ordered by Brig. Gen. Reno to storm the fort. According to the regimental historian, the 21st Massachusetts Infantry was the first regiment to mount the earthworks of the fort; however, the honor was also claimed by the 9th New York Infantry Regiment. The Union forces were victorious in capturing the Confederate fort on Roanoke Island and took approximately 2,500 Confederate soldiers prisoner. The 21st suffered 13 killed and 44 wounded, or eight percent casualties, during the engagement.
After the battle, the 21st took up camp in the former Confederate fort, remaining there for nearly a month. During that time, Lt. Col. Maggi, determined to make the 21st as disciplined as a regiment of Regulars, enforced stern standards for drill and dress parades. After the near mutiny of one company, Maggi submitted his resignation. Maj. William S. Clark, a professor of chemistry at Amherst College, was promoted to lieutenant colonel and assumed command of the regiment on February 28, 1862.
### Battle of New Bern
Burnside's next target, according to McClellan's orders, was the city of New Bern, North Carolina. The Coast Division boarded their transports on March 4, made their way up the Neuse River, and disembarked about 16 miles (26 km) down river of New Bern on March 12. The 21st, numbering 675 men, led their brigade in the march on New Bern, discovering many abandoned fortifications. On March 14, the division participated in the Battle of New Bern. The Confederate defenses were roughly centered on a brick yard converted into a makeshift fort. The 21st, approaching the enemy position, was soon ordered to assault the brick yard and the battery therein. Lt. Col. Clark led four companies of the 21st and temporarily occupied the brick yard. As they captured the battery, Clark stood atop one of the guns, urging his men forward. In their advanced position, the 21st suffered significant casualties and was soon forced to abandon the brickyard. However, the Union forces were eventually victorious, and the city of New Bern was captured. After the battle, Maj. Gen. Burnside presented the first cannon captured by the 21st to Amherst College in honor of 1st Lt. Frazar Stearns, son of the President of Amherst College, and adjutant of the 21st, who was killed during the engagement. Lt. Col. Clark received a promotion to colonel for his conduct during the Battle of New Bern. The regiment suffered 58 casualties, or eight percent (23 killed, 35 wounded).
### Battle of Camden
Following the engagement at New Bern, the 21st was among the regiments selected for an expedition to destroy the Dismal Swamp Canal which would cripple the Confederacy's shipbuilding activities at Norfolk, Virginia. A portion of Reno's brigade was transported by steamers to Camden County and engaged in the relatively minor Battle of Camden on April 19, 1862. The 21st, at this stage, numbered 500 men, having lost numerous soldiers to disease while in an unsanitary camp at New Bern. After the Battle of Camden, Reno eventually abandoned the expedition against the canal and the brigade returned to New Bern on April 22. In the course of the mission, the 21st Massachusetts Infantry had light casualties of three percent (four killed, 11 wounded, and one missing).
## Northern Virginia Campaign
The Coast Division's next assignment was supposed to be the capture of Wilmington, North Carolina. However, the failure of McClellan's Peninsular Campaign required the recall of the Coast Division to Virginia. The 21st broke their camp in New Bern and boarded schooners on July 2, 1862, while hearing conflicting rumors of McClellan's success or defeat. They arrived in Newport News, Virginia, on July 9.
During July, two additional divisions were consolidated under Maj. Gen. Burnside's command to form the IX Corps. At the beginning of August, Brig. Gen Jesse Reno assumed the command of the Corps and was ordered to support the advance of Maj. Gen. John Pope's Army of Virginia towards Richmond. The 21st, along with the rest of the Corps, was quickly transported to Fredericksburg and then marched overland to join Pope's forces on August 14, 1862, in the vicinity of Culpeper Court House, Virginia.
As Gen. Robert E. Lee advanced on Pope's position along the Rapidan River, Pope quickly withdrew his army north. The brigade to which the 21st belonged, now commanded by Col. Edward Ferrero, frequently found itself in the position of rear guard during this movement, skirmishing with the advancing Confederate cavalry. By the time the 21st reached Warrenton, Virginia, on August 27, it was clear to the men that something was wrong. Pope was seen riding by the regiment, "looking warm and excited", and the men learned that Lt. Gen. Thomas Jackson had flanked the Union army and was now in their rear.
### Second Battle of Bull Run
The 21st, now numbering 425 men, crossed Bull Run on August 29 and discovered that Union forces had already engaged Jackson's men in the Second Battle of Bull Run. Just after noon, the 21st's brigade took up a position near the center of the Union lines. Over the course of the afternoon, they witnessed several brigades advance into the woods in their front only to see them beaten back by the Confederates. Finally, the order came for Ferrero's brigade, including the 21st, to advance, unsupported, into the woods. As the brigade stepped off, Brig. Gen. Reno ordered it to halt and personally protested the order to Maj. Gen. Pope. The order was rescinded and, according to Capt. Walcott of the 21st, "we thanked God that General Reno stood between us and General Pope."
After resting on their arms through the night, the 21st awoke to light fighting in their front. Over the course of the morning, Union forces gradually shifted to the left, including the 21st, and it became apparent that the Union right flank had collapsed. Meanwhile, Lee's forces had joined Jackson's and were pressing the Union left flank with a massive and rapid assault. Pope's entire army was soon in retreat. Ferrero's brigade was moved by Brig. Gen. Reno to a position on Henry House Hill to cover the Union retreat along the Centreville Turnpike. The brigade, with the 21st in the center, successfully held off Confederate advances from 7 to 9 pm, buying critical time for the Union army. Finally, under the cover of darkness, the brigade quietly retired across Bull Run. During this defeat for the Union army, the 21st suffered light casualties of seven wounded, or two percent.
### Battle of Chantilly
As the Union army retreated towards Washington, it paused to re-group at Centreville, Virginia. On August 31, 1862, Gen. Lee ordered Lt. Gen. Jackson to flank the Union right and to cut the Union army off from Washington. This flanking effort resulted in the Battle of Chantilly which would prove to be the most disastrous engagement of the entire war for the 21st Massachusetts Infantry.
On September 1, the regiment, now numbering 400, marched northwest from Centreville with the rest of Ferrero's brigade. Although the men did not know it, they were among the handful of brigades chosen by Pope to deflect Jackson's flanking movement. Forming battle lines in a field not far from Chantilly Plantation, the 21st watched the 51st New York advance into thick woods to probe the enemy lines. Orders were soon given to Col. Clark to lead the 21st into the woods to support the 51st. The woods were very dense, and the advance was disorderly. Making matters worse, a powerful thunderstorm burst out as the 21st entered the woodland. Unknowingly, the regiment obliqued far to the left and lost contact with the 51st New York. Encountering a body of troops in their front and unable to identify them through the torrential rain, Col. Clark presumed he had found the 51st, ordered the 21st to rest in place and sent officer Lt. Colonel Joseph Parker Rice forward to make contact. The troops were, in fact, men of Jubal Early's brigade and, before this could be ascertained, the Confederates unleashed a devastating volley on the unsuspecting 21st. "In the sudden anguish and despair of the moment," wrote Capt. Walcott, "the whole regiment seemed to be lying bleeding on the ground." Col. Clark immediately ordered a withdrawal and the 21st left more than 100 dead or wounded in the woods.
Reaching the open fields again, the 21st was ordered by Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny to fill a hole in the center of the Union line. As the 21st advanced, Kearny rode out in front of the regiment, strenuously urging them to hurry, and refuting warnings that Confederates were close by. Kearny was killed by a volley from a force of Confederates concealed just inside a nearby tree line. Now in very close range to the enemy, a tense standoff ensued with leveled muskets as the 21st and the Confederate regiment each demanded the surrender of the other. Finally, the Confederate regiment charged on the 21st. It was the first time and last time, according to the regimental historian, that the 21st gave wounds with the bayonet. The hand-to-hand fighting was severe and great confusion resulted. Col. Clark was separated from the unit when most of the men around him were killed and he found himself lost in the Virginia countryside for four days before finding the unit again. This resulted in the mistaken printing of his obituary in Amherst.
Jackson's flanking maneuver was successfully deflected, and the Battle of Chantilly was fought to a stalemate. But the 21st had suffered severely with 35 percent casualties (38 killed, 76 wounded, 26 missing).
## Maryland Campaign
Early in September 1862, the IX Corps, Reno commanding, returned to the Army of the Potomac. Gen. Lee, emboldened by his victories, invaded Maryland and McClellan moved the Army of the Potomac northwest from Washington to meet the Confederates. Portions of the armies clashed during the Battle of South Mountain, during which the 21st played only a small part. Psychologically, however, it was a devastating fight in that it saw the death of Maj. Gen. Reno, who had been the 21st's brigade commander at the start of the war. "There was not a man in the 21st who did not love him," Capt. Walcott of the 21st wrote, "he always stood with his men in battle."
### Battle of Antietam
As McClellan's Army slowly advanced, Lee took up a defensive position in Sharpsburg, Maryland, along Antietam Creek. The 21st, leaving two companies behind at South Mountain for guard detail, now numbered only 150 men. On September 16, the IX Corps took up a position on the left flank of the Union army, near a 125 feet (38 m) stone bridge soon to be known as Burnside's Bridge.
The next day, McClellan began his attack with several advances by the Union right flank, far from the position of the 21st. For much of the day, the IX Corps could hear the fighting and awaited orders to take the bridge in their front. The 21st even was fortunate enough to have a mail call that morning, and the men sat down to read letters from home while fighting raged around the Dunker Church two miles (3 km) away. Finally, orders came at noon and Ferrero's brigade was moved closer to the bridge. It was a difficult target. On the opposite bank, a wooded bluff rose 100 feet (30 m) above the creek. Concealed there was a small force of 400 Confederates who would successfully hold thousands of Union troops at bay for hours. The men of the 21st watched several successive charges on the bridge by brigades of the IX Corps, all of which were repulsed. Finally, Ferrero's brigade was ordered forward. Reaching the bridge at a run, the 21st was ordered to take up a position next to the left abutment, supplying covering fire, while the 51st New York Infantry and the 51st Pennsylvania Infantry finally carried the position. As the Confederates retreated, Ferrero's brigade was soon stationed at the top of the bluff. Later in the afternoon, around sunset, a Confederate counterattack nearly drove the IX Corps back across Antietam Creek. Ferrero's brigade held the bluff, however, playing a key role in checking the counterattack, and taking severe casualties in the process. The 21st listed 10 killed and 35 wounded, casualties of 30 percent.
## Fredericksburg Campaign
On November 7, 1862, Maj. Gen. McClellan was removed from command of the Army of the Potomac and replaced with Maj. Gen. Burnside. Over the course of November, Burnside moved the army south to Falmouth, Virginia, opposite the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg. The 21st arrived in Falmouth on November 19. Nearly a month passed before Burnside could organize a crossing of the river and an assault on the city and the heights beyond. The Battle of Fredericksburg took place on December 13, 1862.
### Battle of Fredericksburg
The 21st crossed the Rappahannock on December 12 via the pontoon bridges that had been constructed by the Union army and spent the night along the west bank of the river. On the morning of the 13th, the regiment was ordered to the west part of the city, near the base of the heights. Here they removed the grey overcoats that had been issued to them for fear of being mistaken for Confederates. From this position, the 21st watched an assault by a portion of the II Corps over the open plain leading to heights and were shocked by the carnage that resulted from the failed attack. Just after this assault, Ferrero's brigade was ordered to attack the heights and the 21st formed a line of battle on the open ground slightly after noon. The 21st advanced, according to Walcott, "under the best directed artillery fire we had ever suffered or seen." Color bearers were repeatedly shot down. One, Sgt. Thomas Plunkett, was hit by an artillery shell that took off his right arm and left hand. Despite his wounds, he managed to keep the colors from falling. The flag is today in the collection at the Massachusetts State House and still bears the stains from Plunkett's wounds. Plunkett was awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery at Fredericksburg.
The 21st did not reach the stone wall on Marye's Heights but took shelter in a very slight depression in the terrain, remaining pinned in that position until night. Under the cover of darkness, the regiment retired, only to be ordered to the same spot the next morning, expecting a Confederate counterattack which never came. The regiment lost a third of its numbers at Fredericksburg.
## Kentucky and Tennessee
Following his failure at Fredericksburg, Burnside was reassigned to the Department of the Ohio. The IX Corps, which he had formerly commanded, was reassigned with him. The 21st Massachusetts Infantry boarded trains for Cincinnati on March 28, 1863. They were then transported to Mount Sterling, Kentucky, to combat Confederate guerrillas. In April, due to the reduced numbers of the regiment (now about 200) several officers, being effectively without commands, chose to resign their commissions, including Col. William S. Clark. Command of the regiment passed to Lt. Col. George P. Hawkes.
The regiment saw light duty around Lexington, Kentucky, during the summer of 1863. In September, Burnside launched his effort to capture eastern Tennessee from Confederate hands. The 21st marched for Knoxville, Tennessee, on September 12, 1863. During the Knoxville Campaign, the 21st saw minor action, acting primarily in support of artillery due to their small numbers.
## Overland campaign and siege of Petersburg
After roughly a month's furlough back in Massachusetts during February and March 1864, the 21st returned to the Army of the Potomac as part of a newly reorganized IX Corps, rejoining the army a day before the Battle of the Wilderness on May 4, 1864. Lt. Gen. Ulysses Grant had become general-in-chief of the Union army and intended to follow the Army of the Potomac in the field, relentlessly pushing Lee's Confederate army over the course of the summer of 1864. Walcott of the 21st wrote, "There was to be little of the romance or strategy of war in that horribly bloody work of that summer's campaign in Virginia."
During this campaign, the 21st suffered heavy casualties during the Battle of Spotsylvania and the Battle of Bethesda Church. In the latter engagement, the 21st acted as rear guard and bore the brunt of a fierce attack but held their position. Grant's Overland Campaign concluded with several assaults on Petersburg, Virginia, on June 15–18, 1864. The 21st again took considerable casualties during these attacks, particularly during the assault on June 17. Maj. Henry Richardson, commanding the 21st, was wounded in the thigh during the engagement and was shortly thereafter sent home. Now numbering less than 100 men, the regiment had been reduced to a tenth of its original size. Company A, by this time, had only three men on its active roster.
Following these failed assaults, both armies settled into trench warfare around Petersburg. There were numerous attempts, during the summer of 1864, on the part of the Union army, to dislodge the Confederates from their lines. One of the most disastrous for the Union army was the Battle of the Crater during which explosives were detonated in a large mine tunneled beneath the Confederate entrenchments, temporarily creating a gap in their lines. Elements of the IX Corps, under the command of Maj. Gen. Burnside, were to charge through the gap, but instead became trapped in the enormous crater. Brig. Gen. James Ledlie's division, of which the 21st was a part, led the attack. The division had been selected at the last minute over the United States Colored Troops who had actually trained for the operation. Unprepared, Ledlie's division delayed in their attack, allowing the Confederates time to regroup. The 21st managed to advance, mingled with other regiments, to the furthest point penetrated by Union troops but by the afternoon they made the retreat "pell mell" with the rest of Burnside's IX Corps.
## Consolidation with the 36th Massachusetts
On August 18, 1864, the 21st's three-year enlistment came to an end. More than three-quarters of the remaining men chose to re-enlist. These men were consolidated into a battalion of three companies commanded by Capt. Orange S. Sampson. The day after their consolidation, the battalion participated in the Battle of Globe Tavern. The final engagement in which the remaining companies of the 21st participated as an independent unit was the Battle of Poplar Springs Church on September 30, 1864, during which the Union army attempted to extend its lines westward, further encircling Petersburg. Capt. Orange Sampson, commanding the 21st, was killed in this engagement.
On October 21, 1864, the battalion was consolidated with the 36th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. When the 36th was mustered out in June 1865, the three companies that had belonged to the 21st were consolidated with the 56th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. They were finally mustered out of service on July 8, 1865.
## Association with Clara Barton
The Civil War nurse Clara Barton was born and raised in Oxford, Worcester County, Massachusetts, and knew many of the men in the 21st Massachusetts Infantry. More than 40 of them had been her students when she was a teacher before the war. She therefore took an acute interest in their welfare. During the Maryland Campaign, she visited frequently with the regiment and cared for its wounded during the Battle of Antietam. Sgt. Plunkett, the color bearer of the 21st who suffered such grievous wounds during the Battle of Fredericksburg, credited Barton with saving his life. She was at his side when he was first treated, personally arranged his transport home, and carried on correspondence with him after the war. Barton declared the 21st her favorite regiment and, in turn, the men of the 21st voted her a "daughter" of the regiment.
## Legacy
After the war, Col. William S. Clark became a prominent figure in early American/Japanese relations. After establishing the Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University of Massachusetts Amherst), Clark was invited by the government of Japan to establish a similar institution, the Sapporo Agricultural College (now the University of Hokkaido). Clark's fame persists in Japan where he is a household name due to the revolutionary western ideas he brought to Hokkaido and the influence he had on the development of the island. His military experience during the Civil War was an important factor in earning the respect of his Japanese superiors.
Today, the history of the 21st Massachusetts Infantry is interpreted by the Southern Piedmont Historical Reenactment Society (SPHRS), a reenacting group based in North Carolina. While dedicated primarily to the history of the 49th North Carolina Infantry, the SPHRS does represent the 21st at living history events and reenactments throughout the year.
## See also
- List of Massachusetts Civil War units
- Massachusetts in the Civil War
|
19,567,899 |
Nintendo DSi
| 1,173,688,496 |
Handheld game console released in 2008
|
[
"2000s toys",
"2010s toys",
"Discontinued handheld game consoles",
"IQue consoles",
"Mobile software distribution platforms",
"Nintendo DSi",
"Products introduced in 2008"
] |
The is a dual-screen handheld game console released by Nintendo. The console launched in Japan on November 1, 2008, and worldwide beginning in April 2009. It is the third iteration of the Nintendo DS, and its primary market rival was Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP). The fourth iteration, entitled is a larger model that launched in Japan on November 21, 2009, and worldwide beginning in March 2010. Development of the DSi began in late 2006, and the handheld was unveiled during an October 2008 Nintendo conference in Tokyo. Consumer demand convinced Nintendo to produce a slimmer handheld with larger screens than the DS Lite. Consequently, Nintendo removed the Game Boy Advance (GBA) cartridge slot to improve portability without sacrificing durability.
While the DSi's design is similar to that of the DS Lite, it features two digital cameras, supports internal and external content storage, and connects to an online store called the Nintendo DSi Shop. Nintendo stated that families often share DS and DS Lite consoles. Its new functionality was intended to facilitate personalization, so as to encourage each member of a household to purchase a DSi. The handheld supports exclusive physical media in addition to DS games with DSi-specific features and standard DS titles. The only exception to its backward compatibility are earlier DS games that required the GBA slot. Nintendo had sold over 41 million DSi and DSi XL units combined. They were succeeded by the Nintendo 3DS.
Reviews of the Nintendo DSi were generally positive; IGN and bit-tech decried the console's lack of exclusive software and removal of the GBA cartridge slot, though its added functionality caused many journalists to recommend it to those who had not purchased a previous DS model. Numerous critics were disappointed with the limited resolution of DSi's cameras, though others such as Ars Technica and GameSpot agreed they were adequate for the handheld's display. CNET and PCWorld considered the DSi Shop to be the most important buying incentive for current DS owners. Some critics believed the DSi XL was not an essential upgrade. GamePro and Wired UK, on the other hand, praised the DSi XL's larger screens for improving the gameplay experience and revitalizing older DS games.
## Development
Development of the Nintendo DSi started at the end of 2006. It was the first time Masato Kuwahara of Nintendo's Development Engineering Department served as a hardware project leader. Work went at a quick pace to meet deadlines; his team had to devise a theme for the new DS in time for a late December presentation, and by February 2007, most specifications for a chipset had to be completed. Kuwahara reported that his team had difficulty determining the potential market for the handheld during the design process; he said of their goal, "We have to be able to sell the console on its own [without games at launch]. It also has to be able to meld into the already-existing DS market." The console's digital cameras were considered early in development: Nintendo president and Chief Executive Officer Satoru Iwata described the touchscreen as the Nintendo DS's sense of touch, and the microphone as its "ears"; a co-worker suggested that it should have "eyes". Kuwahara's team originally wanted one camera with a swivel mechanism, but this was abandoned due to concerns of reliability, cost, and the need of a thicker console. Owing to consumer demand, Nintendo also improved the handhelds' volume and audio quality and made it slimmer with larger screens compared to the Nintendo DS Lite. However, to improve portability without sacrificing durability, the GBA cartridge slot present on earlier models was removed. To compensate, Nintendo continued to support the DS Lite as long as there was consumer demand for it.
The DSi's size was changed midway through development, delaying its release. Its original design included two DS game card slots, because of demand from both fan communities and Nintendo employees, which consequently made it larger. When the console's designs were unveiled to Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development producers in October 2007, it was met with lukewarm reception due to its size. However, Iwata and Kuwahara's own hopes resulted in the creation of a prototype. A quick hands-on investigation led them to abandon the dual-slot design, which made the DSi approximately 0.12 inches (3 mm) slimmer. Ever since the handheld's in-company unveiling, its internal designs were finished along with assembly and durability specifications. Iwata described having to resize the console so close to manufacturing as being essentially the same as making another handheld.
Yui Ehara, designer of the DS Lite and DSi's original casing, had to redesign the revised case. He advocated changing the six speaker apertures, as their circular perforations were redundant to the rest of the handheld's interface. He believed that this alteration also signaled a clearer distinction between the DSi and its predecessors while keeping the unit "neat" and "simple". Ehara hoped the DSi's added features would not interfere with his desired iconic image of the Nintendo DS product line: two rectangles, one on top of the other, with each half containing another rectangle inside. This model was publicly revealed at the October 2008 Nintendo Conference in Tokyo, along with its Japanese price and release date. While the DS product line's worldwide yearly sales figures consistently surpassed those of its primary market rival, Sony's PlayStation Portable, demand for it in Japan was decreasing; Nintendo's launch of the DSi was intended to stimulate sales. The company was less concerned with releasing the DSi in other territories, where DS Lite market demand remained high.
Development of a large DS Lite model in 2007 eventually led to the DSi XL. Nintendo had designed a large DS Lite model with 3.8-inch (97 mm) screens, compared to the standard 3-inch (76 mm) screens; development of this new handheld advanced far enough that it could have begun mass production. However, Iwata placed the project on hold due to consumer demand for the DS Lite and Wii. He later pitched the idea of simultaneously releasing large and small versions of the DSi instead, but Nintendo's hardware team was incapable of developing two models concurrently. After finishing work on the DSi, Kuwahara started the DSi XL project and became project leader. The DSi XL, a DSi model with 4.2-inch (110 mm) screens, was announced on October 29, 2009. Various names for it were considered, including "DSi Comfort", "DSi Executive", "DSi Premium", "DSi Living", and "DSi Deka" (Japanese for "large"). Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto insisted on "DSi Deka". The handheld has an improved viewing angle over its predecessor, which allows onlookers to see the screen's contents more easily. This feature was absent from the large DS Lite model due to cost issues at the time, which also limited LCD screen size. The cost of LCD screens is determined by how many pieces are cut from a single large glass sheet. To keep these costs within a certain threshold, Nintendo set a screen size limit of approximately 3.8 inches (97 mm), which was later increased to 4.2 inches (110 mm).
## Launch
On November 1, 2008, the DSi was released in Japan; on April 2, 2009, in Australia and New Zealand, and on April 3 in Europe, all with a black and white casing. It launched in the United States and Canada on April 5, alongside the game Rhythm Heaven. It was the first DS console to launch with multiple colors in North America—black and blue. iQue released a Chinese DSi model in black and white, with a pre-installed version of Nintendogs, in December 2009; the Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun reported that the Chinese and Korean models featured improved security, to combat piracy. On April 15, 2010, the DSi was launched in South Korea in white, black, blue, and pink, alongside the game MapleStory DS. MapleStory DS was also bundled with a red limited-edition DSi, which had characters from the game printed around its external camera. Other countries the DSi was released in include Brazil, Russia, and Turkey.
Nintendo had shipped 200,000 units for the DSi's Japanese launch, and during its first two days on sale, over 170,000 units were sold—the remaining units were either unclaimed pre-orders or reserved for sale on Culture Day. By the end of the month, the DSi sold 535,000 units, in comparison to 550,000 DS Lites sold in its launch month. In the two-day launch period, Europe and North American sales totaled 600,000 units combined. North American first week sales almost doubled the DS Lite's 226,000 units by selling 435,000. In the United Kingdom, the console totaled 92,000 sales within two days of release, which GfK/Chart-Track data showed to be the fourth-best opening weekend ever in the region—higher than previous records set by other DS iterations.
DSi launch events were held on the western and eastern coasts of the United States. Nintendo sponsored an official launch event at the Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles and the Nintendo World Store in New York City. The LA midnight launch party featured several events, including merchandise handouts, signings and art galleries from iam8bit, parkour demonstrations, and performances by Gym Class Heroes. Hundreds attended and over 150 stayed until midnight to purchase a unit at GameStop. A human-sized Lego DSi by artist Sean Kenney was on display at the Nintendo World Store.
The Nintendo DSi XL was released in Japan on November 21, 2009, in bronze, burgundy, and white. The former two colors were available for its European launch on March 5, 2010, and its North American launch on March 28. The console launched in Australia on April 15, 2010, in bronze and burgundy. The DSi XL was released in other countries including Brazil, South Africa, and Turkey. Over 100,500 units were sold during the console's first two days on sale in Japan, and 141,000 units were sold during its first three days in the United States.
The 2011 release of the Nintendo 3DS, the successor to the Nintendo DS series of handhelds, was announced on March 23, 2010, to preempt impending news leaks by the Japanese press and to attract potential attendees to the Electronic Entertainment Expo. According to industry analysts, the timing drew attention from the North American launch of the DSi XL. M2 Research senior analyst Billy Pigeon argued the "XL is old news ... in Japan – and Nintendo is a very Japan-centric organization. This is just the corporate parent in Japan maybe not acting in the best interest of Nintendo of America." Iwata dismissed any significant impact when speaking to concerned investors, "those who are eager to buy Nintendo 3DS right after the announcement generally tend to react quickly to anything new on the market, and those who are purchasing a Nintendo DS today tend to react relatively slowly."
## Demographic and sales
Nintendo targeted a wider demographic profile with the first Nintendo DS (2004) than it had with the Game Boy line. Comparing 2008 life-to-date DS and DS Lite sales to the best-selling game console, Sony's PlayStation 2, showed potential in further expanding the Nintendo DS gaming population—particularly in Europe and the United States. To further promote the product line while expanding its gaming population, Nintendo created the DSi. Iwata has said that families often share DS and DS Lite consoles, so to encourage each family member to buy an individual handheld, Nintendo added personalization features to the DSi.
The "i" in DSi symbolizes both an individual person (I) and the handheld's cameras (eyes); the former meaning contrasts with the "i"'s in Wii, which represent players gathering together. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé said, "If Wii was about gaming for the masses, then think of DSi as creativity for the masses." Iwata has said that the DSi is meant to be a first camera for children, and a social networking device for adults. In response to media commentary following the DSi's announcement, Iwata insisted that its new audio and camera capabilities are not meant to compete with mobile phones, the iPod, or the PSP. He explained their role in the marketplace:
> While cell phone and digital camera manufacturers have been trying to compete against each other by intensifying the picture pixel quality and zooming ability of their camera functions, and while music players are making its improvements mainly by making smaller exterior design and by increasing memory storage capacity, DSi is trying to propose a different path of evolution by providing the users with the opportunity to be able to touch and play with photographs and sounds.
The DSi helped maintain strong sales for Nintendo's handheld product line. The DSi accounted for 40 percent of its product line's 2009 United Kingdom sales and frequently topped weekly sales charts in Japan during its first year of availability. In the United States, the console's initial three-month sales surpassed those of the DS, DS Lite, and Wii. Average weekly sales of the Wii and Nintendo DS declined slightly in March; Nintendo DS hardware sales stabilized at over 200,000 units for seven months after the DSi's April launch, while Wii sales diminished. Gamasutra estimated that, in October 2009 and February 2010, 50 percent of Nintendo DS unit sales were DSi consoles. In an October 2009 interview, Fils-Aimé announced that the DSi had sold 2.2 million units in the United States. He said, "If you give the consumer great value in terms of what they pay, they're willing to spend, and we say [that] based on the experience of launching the DSi". The United States had its highest yearly DS sales in 2009 with 11.22 million units sold. The DSi and DSi XL accounted for 16.88 million of the 27.11 million units sold worldwide of its product line for Nintendo's 2009 fiscal year beginning April 1, 2009, and ending March 31, 2010.
In Gamasutra's United States hardware sales estimate for July 2010, the DSi and DSi XL each outsold the DS Lite. The website reported DSi sales of approximately 300,000 units in July 2009 and February 2010, which remains consistent for July 2010 if combined with DSi XL sales. As a result, the average price consumers were spending on the Nintendo DS hardware family rose to over \$165 (in 2004 dollars, \$ adjusted for inflation as of 2010), which is over \$15 more than the November 2004 launch price of the original Nintendo DS. Nintendo made its first DSi price cuts in Europe on June 18, 2010, for DSi and DSi XL consoles in Japan on June 19, and in North America on September 12. The DSi and DSi XL accounted for 14.66 million of the 17.52 million units sold worldwide of its product line in fiscal year 2010.
In a United States hardware sales estimate for July 2011 by Gamasutra following the DS Lite's price drop a month earlier, about 60 to 70 percent of approximately 290,000 DS units sold were DSi and DSi XL consoles. Lackluster 3DS sales forced Nintendo to drop its price to match the DSi XL in the United States on August 12. Japan and Europe had similar price reductions. Gamasutra speculated potential DS buyers in the United States opted for the 3DS as a result; DS sales for August 2011 decreased by 45 percent, while it combined with 3DS sales remained steady compared to the previous month. Nintendo made its second DSi and DSi XL price cuts in North America on May 20, 2012. Gamasutra called these price cuts the DS product line's "final send-off" and expects "by this time next year its contributions to the market will be minuscule. After Christmas, Nintendo will effectively be a single-handheld system company, putting all of portable software efforts into the Nintendo 3DS."
## Hardware
The Nintendo DSi's design is similar to that of the second DS iteration, the Nintendo DS Lite. It is approximately 12 percent shorter (0.10 inches (2.5 mm)) than the Nintendo DS Lite when closed, but slightly wider and lighter. The DSi has two 3.25-inch (83 mm) TFT-LCD screens—.25 inches (6.4 mm) larger than those of previous models—that are capable of displaying 262,144 colors. The touch sensitive lower screen accepts input from the included stylus. The handheld features four lettered buttons (X, Y, A, B), a directional pad, and Start, Select, and Power buttons. Two shoulder buttons, a game card slot, and a power cable input are placed under the console's hinge. The included AC adapter (WAP-002) is not compatible with any previous DS model.
Unlike previous models, the handheld has two VGA (0.3-megapixel) digital cameras. The first is on the internal hinge and points toward the user; the second is on the outer casing and faces away from the user. The SD card slot is also new, set behind a cover on the right side. While the DS Lite used a switch, the DSi, like the original Nintendo DS, features a button to power on or off. The button has extra functions and unlike the original's power button, it is located on the bottom-left side of the touchscreen. Brightness and volume controls are on the left side; five brightness settings—one more than on the DS Lite—are available. The headset port is on the bottom.
The DSi has a matte surface to hide fingerprints. It is available in numerous colors, but color selection varies by region. For example, lime green is exclusive to Japan, while red is available in Europe and North America. North America also received a different shade of blue. Numerous special-edition models and bundles have been released, including those for Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, and the 2009 Black Friday shopping day.
### Technical specifications
The DSi has more RAM and a faster CPU than the DS Lite. Developers reported the console has a native mode, which runs software specifically designed for its hardware, access to the system's extra processing and memory resources. The inclusion of a codec integrated circuit (a microchip) amplifies sound signals and converts them from digital to analog. This increases audio output, and depending on the mode, higher audio quality. Unused space on the motherboard was removed; the CPU was relocated, and the battery housing was expanded.
The camera's resolution is two-and-a-half times higher than the handheld's screens. However, their resolution is considerably lower than contemporaneous digital cameras and mobile phones. This was done to help keep their price reasonable and to maintain a preferable response time for viewing photos in quick session, particularity since numerous applications will use them.
- CPU: The DSi has two ARM architecture CPUs: ARM9 clocked at 133 MHz and ARM7 clocked at 33 MHz. Its ARM9 is twice as fast as previous models.
- RAM: 16 MB (four times as much as previous models)
- Screen resolution: 256 × 192 pixels (same as previous models)
- Cameras: 640 × 480 pixels
- Storage: 256 MB of internal flash memory with an SD card (up to 2 GB) and SDHC card (up to 32 GB) expansion slot
- Battery: Shorter than the DS Lite, regardless of brightness setting; for example, the DSi has a battery life of 9–14 hours on the lowest brightness setting, compared to the 15–19 hours of the DS Lite on the same setting. The battery is an 840 mAh internal rechargeable, compared to 1000 mAh for the DS Lite, and has an optimal lifespan of approximately 500 cycles; after this point, it may be replaced by the user.
### Larger model
The Nintendo DSi XL features larger screens, and a greater overall size, than the original DSi. It is the fourth DS model, the first to be available as a pure size variation. Iwata said that cost restraints had, until then, limited the screen size and multiplayer aspects of portable game consoles, and that the DSi XL offers "an improved view angle on the screens", which makes it the first "portable system that can be enjoyed with people surrounding the gamer." He argued that this introduces a new method of playing portable video games, wherein those "surrounding the game player can also join in one way or the other to the gameplay." While the original DSi was specifically designed for individual use, Iwata suggested that DSi XL buyers give the console a "steady place on a table in the living room," so that it might be shared by multiple household members.
The DSi XL is the longest, widest and heaviest DS model. The console features two 4.2-inch (110 mm) wide-viewing-angle LCD screens with the same resolution as the smaller model. It has improved battery life over the DSi on all brightness settings; for example, batteries last 13–17 hours at the dimmest setting. The handheld is outfitted with identical speakers contained in larger speaker enclosures, enabling them to produce louder sound. The hinges stop the screen at 120° in addition to the original DSi's position of 155° to allow easier table-top viewing. The DSi XL is bundled with two longer styli, one of which is thicker, rounded, and pen-like, and does not fit inside the unit.
The DSi XL has a matte surface, and the exterior of its top panel is coated with a gloss finish. It is available in eight two-toned colors, varying by region such as white, green, red, yellow, and pink. Two special-edition models were released: those for LovePlus+ and the 25th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. Flipnote Studio and the Nintendo DSi Browser come pre-installed with the DSi XL, alongside other, region-specific software.
## Features
Like the Wii, the DSi has upgradeable firmware, and features a menu interface that displays applications as selectable icons. The seven primary icons represent the game card software, "Nintendo DSi Camera", "Nintendo DSi Sound", "Nintendo DSi Shop", "DS Download Play", "PictoChat", and "system settings"; additional applications may be downloaded from the DSi Shop. Icons are set in a single-row grid navigable with the stylus or D-pad, and may be re-arranged via drag-and-drop. The power button can either soft reset the console, returning it to the main menu, or shut it down. Game cards may be hot swapped when the console is set to the main menu, allowing players to switch game cards without shutting down.
The DSi has more extensive multimedia features than previous models; AAC audio files from other devices, pictures, and downloadable software can be stored to an SD card. The latter two do not need external storage and can be stored internally. Before taking a photograph, users may modify the viewfinder's live image with ten "lens" options. Images captured can be uploaded to the Wii's Photo Channel, and, for consoles with the 1.4 firmware update or greater, to the social networking website Facebook.
The built-in sound player has voice recording and music playback functionality. Voice recordings can be edited with audio filters and manipulated through pitch and playback. Users may save and modify up to 18 ten-second sound clips. These clips cannot be exported to an SD card. Users can play music from SD cards with visualizations displayed on the upper screen. AAC audio with .mp4, .m4a, or .3gp filename extensions are supported, but non-AAC formats, including MP3, are not supported. Sounds like drum beats and the classic Mario jumping noises can be added with button presses. Playing music also has its own set of manipulation options similar to those used for voice recordings, as well as a group of audio filters. Using headphones, music can be played when the case is closed. Users may export photos, sounds, and Internet settings to a 3DS.
### Internet connectivity
The Nintendo DSi connects to the Internet via either its built-in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi or a Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector; both methods grant access to the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service. The DSi supports WEP, WPA (AES/TKIP), and WPA2 (AES/TKIP) wireless encryption; only software with built-in support can use the latter two encryption types, as they were not supported by the DS and DS Lite. Up to six wireless Internet connection profiles can be saved; using the traditional setup method, the first three profiles support WEP encryption, while the remaining three are selectable under a more advanced option, which supports WPA encryption. Under this advanced option, users may access the Wi-Fi Protected Setup method and configure proxy settings. The DSi could automatically detect Nintendo Zone service areas thus preventing the need to manually setup Wi-Fi connections. The service offered demos of upcoming and currently available games, access to the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and DSi Shop, and may have had location-specific content.
## Software library
All DS games are compatible with the DSi, except those that require the GBA slot. Because of its absence, the DSi is not backward compatible with GBA Game Paks or with accessories that require the GBA slot, such as the Nintendo DS Rumble Pak and the Guitar Hero: On Tour series guitar grip. "DSi-enhanced" game cards contain DSi-exclusive features, but can still be used with earlier models; "DSi-exclusive" game cards cannot. The DSi is Nintendo's first region-locked handheld; it prevents using certain software released for another region. Due to regional differences in Internet services and parental controls, DSi-specific software is region locked. However, cartridge software compatible with previous models, Internet browsing, and photo sharing are not locked. Homebrew flash cards designed for previous DS models are incompatible with the DSi, but new cards capable of running DS software on a DSi were available.
Like the Wii, the DSi could connect to an online store. The store, called the DSi Shop, allowed users to download DSiWare games and applications, which were paid for with a Nintendo Points Prepaid Card (previously known as Wii Points Prepaid Card). Application prices followed a three-tiered pricing scheme. The service launched with the DSi Browser, a free web browser developed by Opera Software and Nintendo. A DSiWare trial campaign, whose expiration date varied by region, formerly offered 1,000 free Nintendo Points to each DSi that accesses the DSi Shop. Over 500 downloadable games were available, varying by region. Purchased DSiWare on DSi or DSi XL consoles cannot be transferred between units unless that console is repaired or replaced by Nintendo. Most DSiWare can be transferred to a 3DS, however saved data cannot. Nintendo Points became irredeemable on September 30, 2016, and the Nintendo DSi Shop was shut down on March 31, 2017.
## Reception
The Nintendo DSi received generally positive reviews. Critics praised many of the console's changes to the DS Lite's aesthetic and functionality, but complained that it launched with insufficient exclusive software. IGN's Craig Harris noted that the DSi-exclusive software library and DSi Shop were lacking in content even after five months on the Japanese market. Jeff Bakalar of CNET said that owners of the original DS should consider buying a DSi, but that its only incentive for DS Lite owners was the DSi Shop. PCWorld New Zealand's Jan Birkeland shared Bakalar's opinion, but believed that it was too early to judge the quality of DSi Shop software. Many critics were disappointed by the removal of the GBA cartridge slot, but some of them, such as PCWorld's Darren Gladstone, Bit-tech's Joe Martin, and IGN's Harris and Lowe, believed that it was a reasonable exchange for SD card support and the DSi Shop. However, Bakalar stated, "We'd gladly give up the 4 millimeters [of reduced thickness] to be able to play any Game Boy Advance game."
Most reviewers criticized the quality of its cameras, particularly due to their resolution in comparison to contemporaneous mobile phones. They considered them sufficient for the DSi's screens, however. Harris and Lowe believed that the camera's only use was to take "silly pictures of yourself and others". They complained about the difficulty of taking photographs in low-light environments, and said that low-light images were tinged green or blue. Opinions on the DSi's photograph-editing tools were varied: Bit-tech's Martin and Reid considered them to be a gimmick, but Bakalar and Cliff Edwards of BusinessWeek thought otherwise. Edwards said that the camera's use in gameplay was a new opportunity for developers; Martin did not think that the concept would be widely adopted, as he believed it to be "a gimmick that would alienate [...] DS Lite owners". Eurogamer's Tom Bramwell speculated that the DSi follows Game & Watch and Game Boy creator Gunpei Yokoi's philosophy of using dated technology developers are familiar with to introduce new game design concepts that are inexpensive enough for mass production at a profit. He argued its features are designed to "briefly entertain" early adopters while encouraging "developers to consider it as an alternative [of the DS Lite]" to build an attractive game library for the long term.
Because of the DSi's additions to the DS Lite design, critics recommended the console to those who had not purchased a previous DS model. Pete Metzger of the Los Angeles Times considered the DSi to be "more like version 2.5 than a total reboot", but called its new features "worthwhile additions to an already great product." Gladstone gave the DSi a score of 75/100, and said that Nintendo "puts in smart nips and tucks to its already-svelte handheld while adding a raft of useful multimedia features." Harris and Lowe defined the console's hardware redesign as "evolutionary", rather than "revolutionary". After the DSi was unveiled, Goldman Sachs analyst Matthew J. Fassler called the DSi Shop a "tangible early threat" to big-box stores and retailers. Martin believed that the cameras and DSi Shop did not justify purchasing the DSi at launch, but, in line with the general consensus, saw potential in future software for the console.
Douglas Rankine of Wired UK and McKinley Noble of GamePro thought previously existing Nintendo DS games were revitalized with the Nintendo DSi XL's larger screens; games like Scribblenauts and The World Ends with You benefited from increased touchscreen precision and increased legibility of text, respectively. CVG's Mike Jackson argued that the bigger screens, which made its unchanged resolution blockier, would probably be less noticeable to the older demographic for which the XL is undoubtedly designed. However, Jackson and IGN's Scott Lowe and Chris Burke agreed its clear and vivid colors considerably compensated for its unchanged resolution. Carol Mangis of PC Magazine thought families looking to share a handheld between members should consider a DSi XL, but the larger screens were not enough of an incentive for current DSi owners to upgrade. Lowe, Burke, Jackson, and Bakalar concluded the larger DSi model is not an essential upgrade; Jackson explained "if you tend not to carry it out with you, and only ever tend to use it at home, then the DSi XL is the better choice".
## See also
- Game Boy Micro—second revision of Nintendo's previous handheld product line.
- Clamshell design
|
2,254,408 |
Ronald Stuart
| 1,146,611,638 |
First World War Victoria Cross recipient and senior British Merchant Navy officer
|
[
"1886 births",
"1954 deaths",
"British Merchant Navy officers",
"British World War I recipients of the Victoria Cross",
"Burials in Kent",
"Companions of the Distinguished Service Order",
"English people of Canadian descent",
"People educated at Liverpool College",
"People from Charing",
"Recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1914–1918 (France)",
"Recipients of the Distinguished Service Cross (United Kingdom)",
"Recipients of the Navy Cross (United States)",
"Royal Naval Reserve personnel",
"Royal Navy officers",
"Royal Navy officers of World War I",
"Royal Navy recipients of the Victoria Cross",
"Victoria Cross awardees from Liverpool"
] |
Ronald Niel Stuart, VC, DSO, RD, RNR (26 August 1886 – 8 February 1954) was a British Merchant Navy commodore and Royal Navy captain who was highly commended following extensive and distinguished service at sea over a period of more than thirty-five years. During World War I he was awarded the Victoria Cross, the Distinguished Service Order, the French Croix de Guerre avec Palmes and the United States' Navy Cross for a series of daring operations he conducted while serving in the Royal Navy against the German U-boat campaign in the Atlantic.
Stuart received his Victoria Cross following a ballot by the men under his command. This unusual method of selection was used after the Admiralty board was unable to choose which members of the crew deserved the honour after a desperate engagement between a Q-ship and a German submarine off the Irish coast. His later career included command of the liner RMS Empress of Britain and the management of the London office of a major transatlantic shipping company. Following his retirement in 1951, Stuart moved into his sister's cottage in Kent and died three years later. A sometimes irascible man, he was reportedly embarrassed by any fuss surrounding his celebrity and was known to exclaim "Mush!" at any demonstration of strong emotion.
## Early life
Ronald Niel Stuart was born in 1886 in Liverpool to Neil Stuart and Mary Harrison, both from experienced seafaring families. Neil Sr. had been born on Prince Edward Island in Canada and had met and married Mary in Montreal. She was the daughter of a master mariner from Australia. In the 1880s the family moved to Liverpool, where Stuart was born as the youngest of six children. Neil worked in the city as a dock superintendent and owner of a wholesale tea shop before dying suddenly while preparing for a return to the Merchant Navy.
Stuart was by this time a stocky, blonde, blue-eyed man described as "powerful" but "very bleak and penetrating". He was initially educated at Shaw Street College, but following his father's death was forced to leave and take a job as a clerk in an office. Stuart's son commented that "He hated it [the job]. He hated Liverpool". In 1902, Stuart decided to leave the city and find work in a different environment. He took an apprenticeship with the shipping company Steele & Co and was sent to learn his trade on the sailing barque Kirkhill.
In 1905 the Kirkhill was wrecked on a rock near the Falkland Islands. Stuart survived the sinking and returned to England to continue his training. He was posted to a new ship upon his return but she too was wrecked by a cyclone off the Florida coast. Eventually, after several years service he achieved his mariner's qualifications and gained a job with the Allan Line as a junior officer. He then served in a variety of sailing and steam ships traveling across most of the world. In 1910, the Allan Line was taken over by the Canadian Pacific Line and he continued working with the company's new owners as a junior ship's officer.
## First World War
At the outbreak of World War I Stuart was called up to service, as an officer in the Royal Naval Reserve. He was originally posted as a junior officer on board the old and obsolete destroyer HMS Opossum in Plymouth. This ship was used for harbour patrols and intercepting neutral merchant ships and other work Stuart considered tedious. He became increasingly impatient with the life and repeatedly applied to his senior officers with requests for transfer; at one point he even requested that he be commissioned into the army. All of these were turned down, with increasing levels of hostility from his commanders, one of whom was reported to have told him to "Go to hell! And shut the door behind you!"
### HMS Farnborough
In the spring of 1916 he was transferred as first lieutenant to a Q-ship under Gordon Campbell. A Q-ship was a merchant ship with hidden weaponry, commanded secretly by the navy and manned by a Royal Navy crew. When attacked by a submarine, the Q-ship would feign damage until the enemy was close enough to engage and then reveal its weapons to counter-attack. Campbell, a major proponent of Q-ship strategy, was impressed with Stuart's stubborn refusal to accept the two years of rejection and brought him in to replace an officer whose nerves had cracked under the strain of Q-ship operations.
Stuart's experience in merchant shipping proved invaluable to his work and he soon had the crew of Q5 (also known as HMS Farnborough) disciplined and the ship well maintained and run. Campbell himself was very pleased with his executive officer, declaring him "on the top line". Stuart and Campbell later fell out over Stuart's belief that Campbell was exaggerating the danger of Q-ship service, Stuart comparing his own life favourably with service in the trenches.
His first year of Q-ship service was frustrating for Stuart and the crew. Although, prior to his attachment to the ship, Farnborough had succeeded in sinking an enemy submarine (the U-68 in March 1916), there had been no successes since. In February 1917, Campbell decided that in order to properly invite an attack, the Farnborough would have to actually be torpedoed before combat and then engage the submarine as she closed to finish the job with shellfire. On 17 February this theory was proven correct off Southern Ireland when the lone Farnborough was struck by a torpedo fired at extreme range. Campbell intentionally failed to evade the missile and the ship took the blow in the hold, causing some minor injuries to the crew but serious damage to the ship. The crew were well rehearsed and the "panic party" took to their boats with a great show of alarm and disorder while the gun crews manned positions on their hidden weapons. When four lifeboats had been released and the ship had settled in the water and was clearly sinking, the submarine U-83 pulled up just ten yards (9m) from the wreck. A hail of shot was then unleashed by the Farnborough's remaining crew from their six-pounder gun and several machine guns into the stationary submarine. The very first shot decapitated the German captain Bruno Hoppe and the U-boat was rapidly reduced to a battered wreck. Eight German sailors escaped the submarine before it sank but only two could be pulled from the water, one of whom subsequently died from his wounds.
The Farnborough too was sinking from her torpedo damage. Realising this, Campbell left the men in the boats, destroyed all confidential papers and radioed for help. His unorthodox message read: "Q5 slowly sinking respectfully wishes you goodbye". This message reached nearby naval shipping, and within an hour the destroyers HMS Narwhal and HMS Buttercup arrived and began to tow the stricken ship back to land. During the night a depth charge accidentally exploded on board Farnborough and the tow was dropped. Campbell ordered the twelve men remaining aboard into a lifeboat and attempted to take a final survey of his vessel, only to be driven back by another exploding depth charge. On returning to the rail he discovered that Stuart had disobeyed his order and remained on board, to make sure his captain disembarked safely. The tow was later reattached and the battered Farnborough beached at Mill Cove, in no fit state to return to sea. Campbell was awarded the Victoria Cross in recognition of his service in the action and £1,000 of prize money was shared among the crew. Stuart and Engineer-Lieutenant Len Loveless were both presented with the Distinguished Service Order.
### HMS Pargust
Following the action Stuart remained with Campbell and Loveless as Inspectors of Shipping, choosing those vessels they believed to be best suited to Q-ship work for naval service. After some time ashore all three returned to sea in a vessel they had personally chosen, an old, battered tramp steamer named SS Vittoria. Renaming it HMS Pargust, they armed their vessel with a 4-inch (102 mm) gun, two twelve pounders, two machine guns, torpedo tubes and depth charges. Thus armed the Pargust departed on her first patrol to the same grounds where U-83 had been sunk, in the waters south of Ireland. For the first few days her duties consisted only of rescuing survivors from sunken cargo ships but with increasing German activity, an attack was expected at any moment. On 7 June 1917, Pargust was suddenly struck by a torpedo fired at very close range from an unseen German submarine. Unlike the Farnborough action, the damage done to the Pargust was immense. The ship was holed close to the waterline, and its cover was almost blown when one of the twelve pounder gun ports was blasted free from its mounting; it was only the quick thinking of sailor William Williams, who took the full weight of the gun port on himself, that prevented the gun being exposed. One petty officer was killed and a number wounded.
By this stage in the war, the German submarine authorities had become aware of the existence of Q-ships and Captain Ernst Rosenow of UC-29 was taking no risks with his target, remaining at 400 yards (370 m) distance watching the staged panicked evacuation of the ship. While the hidden gun crews watched the enemy approach the lifeboats, the officer in charge of the boats, Lieutenant Francis Hereford, realised that the submarine would follow his movements, as its commander assumed him to be the captain. Hereford therefore ordered his men to row back towards the ship, thus luring the enemy into range. This made the submarine commander believe that the ship's crew were planning to regain their vessel and he immediately closed to just 50 yards (46 m), surfaced and began angrily semaphoring to the "survivors" in the boats. This was exactly what the gun crews had been waiting for and a volley of fire was directed at the U-boat. Numerous holes were blown in the conning tower and the submarine desperately attempted to flee on the surface before slowing down and heeling over, trailing oil. The gun crews then stopped firing only for the submarine to suddenly restart its engines and attempt to escape. In a final barrage of fire the submarine was hit fatally, a large explosion blowing the vessel in two. Rosenow and 22 of his crew were killed, while two survivors were rescued by the panic party.
The wrecked Pargust was taken in tow by HMS Crocus, USS Cushing and HMS Zinnia and reached Queenstown barely afloat nearly two days later. The port's admiral congratulated the crew personally on their arrival. As before, the crew were awarded £1,000 prize money and several awards were promised. Unusually, the Admiralty were unable to decide who among the ship's crew should receive the Victoria Cross as all were deemed to have participated in the action with equal valour. It was thus decided for the first time, under article 13 of the Victoria Cross's royal warrant, that one officer and one enlisted man would be granted the award following a ballot by the ship's company. After the vote, from which Campbell abstained, the Victoria Crosses were awarded to Stuart and William Williams. Fourteen other crew members were awarded medals, including DSOs for Campbell and Hereford. In addition, every sailor had his participation in the action and subsequent ballot noted on his service records.
Due to the official secrecy surrounding the activities of the Q-ships, Stuart's and Williams's Victoria Crosses were announced without fanfare or explanation of their actions; even the Pargust's name was omitted from the citation. The full account of the action was not published until after the armistice in November 1918. Stuart was noted as the first Anglo-Canadian to receive the Victoria Cross and his obituary later stated that in the action, "his gallantry stood out". The medal was presented to him in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace by King George V on 23 July 1917.
### Victoria Cross citations
The award alone without any details was announced in The London Gazette dated 20 July 1917.
"To receive the Victoria Cross.
Lieut. Ronald Neil Stuart, D.S.O., R.N.R.
Sea. William Williams, R.N.R., O.N., 6224A
Lieutenant Stuart and Seaman Williams were selected by the officers and ship's company respectively of one of H.M. Ships to receive the Victoria Cross under Rule 13 of the Royal Warrant dated 29th January, 1856."
As with other Victoria Cross awards for "services in action with enemy submarines" the circumstances of the award were not announced until after the end of the war.
"On the 7th June, 1917, while disguised as a British merchant vessel with a dummy gun mounted aft, H.M.S. "Pargust" was torpedoed at very close range. Her boiler-room, engine-room, and No. 5 hold were immediately flooded, and the starboard lifeboat was blown to pieces. The weather was misty at the time, fresh breeze and a choppy sea. The "Panic Party", under the command of Lieutenant F. R. Hereford, D.S.C., R.N.R., abandoned ship, and as the last boat was shoving off, the periscope of the submarine was observed close before the port beam about 400 yards distant. The enemy then submerged, and periscope reappeared directly astern, passing to the starboard quarter, and then round to the port beam, when it turned again towards the ship, breaking surface about 50 yards away. The lifeboat, acting as a lure, commenced to pull round the stern; submarine followed closely and Lieutenant Hereford, with complete disregard of the danger incurred from the fire of either ship or submarine (who had trained a maxim on the lifeboat), continued to decoy her to within 50 yards of the ship. The "Pargust" then opened fire with all guns, and the submarine, with oil squirting from her side and the crew pouring out of the conning tower, steamed slowly across the bows with a heavy list. The enemy crew held up their hands in token of surrender, whereupon fire immediately ceased. The submarine then began to move away at a gradually increasing speed, apparently endeavouring to escape in the mist. Fire was reopened until she sank, one man clinging to the bow as she went down. The boats, after a severe pull to the windward, succeeded in saving one officer and one man. American Destroyers and a British sloop arrived shortly afterwards, and the "Pargust" was towed back to port. As on the previous occasions, officers and men displayed the utmost courage and confidence in their captain, and the action serves as an example of what perfect discipline, when coupled with such confidence, can achieve."
### HMS Tamarisk
In addition to receiving the Victoria Cross, Stuart was promoted to lieutenant commander and given his own command, HMS Tamarisk. Tamarisk was a small sloop built in 1916 that was capable of being disguised as a merchant vessel and used as a Q-ship, designated Q11.
A few months after assuming command, on 15 October 1917, Stuart was on hand to rescue the United States Navy destroyer USS Cassin after she was torpedoed by U-61 in heavy weather. Along with one crewmember killed and nine wounded, the Cassin had lost her entire stern including the rudder and was in danger of sinking. The dead crew member was Osmond Ingram, who had died throwing burning munitions overboard and was later posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Twenty miles from the Irish coast and in total darkness, the Tamarisk not only found the crippled ship but was able to come alongside in high seas and a strong gale and pass across a tow line. Twice during the night the tow broke and twice it was reconnected as the battle to save the ship continued. The next morning several trawlers came to the aid of the Q-ship and together they enabled the Cassin to make port, saving the ship and her crew. Ten years after the Cassin's rescue the US Navy awarded Stuart the Navy Cross in recognition of his part in the operation; it was a rare presentation to a sailor of a foreign navy and the only occasion in which the recipient also possessed the Victoria Cross.
The remainder of the war was quiet for Stuart, achieving no further successes against submarines. Upon the armistice the full details of his Victoria Cross action were revealed and, in 1919, he was mentioned in despatches in recognition of the service he had performed during the Q-ship operations. As further recognition of his overall efforts against the German submarine campaign, the French government presented him with the Croix de Guerre.
In 1919, Stuart returned to Canadian Pacific, his maritime reputation on both sides of the Atlantic greatly enhanced by his war record. In the same year he met and married his wife Evelyn, with whom he had three sons and two daughters.
## Return to the Merchant Navy
After post-war service on a succession of merchant ships, Stuart was provided with his first merchant command, the steam freighter SS Brandon, in 1927. After a short period in charge, he was again promoted and transferred, taking up the role of staff captain on the liner RMS Empress of Australia.
### Ships' captain
Just a year later he again moved, becoming full captain on the 15,000-ton liner SS Minnedosa – a smaller and slower ship that transported immigrants to Canada. Stuart was one of a number of Royal Naval Reserve officers employed by Canadian Pacific, part of a deliberate recruitment policy by the company. In 1929, he was given his biggest command yet as he took over the newly completed 20,000-ton ocean liner SS Duchess of York. He commanded her for five years along her route from Liverpool to Saint John, New Brunswick stopping at Belfast and Greenock. He also briefly commanded her on the New York City to Bermuda route. It was during this period, in 1929, that he was awarded the Decoration for Officers of the Royal Naval Reserve (RD) in honour of his long service and in 1935 he was made a full Naval Reserve Captain. He maintained his connection with the RNR throughout his life, becoming Honorary President of the RNR Officer's Club and a part-time naval aide-de-camp to King George VI in 1941 – a position he held part-time throughout World War II. A special warrant was written in 1927 that allowed him to fly the Blue Ensign from any ship, mercantile or military, which he commanded.
In 1931, while he was in command of the Duchess of York, his wife suddenly died in Toxteth. This event is said to have changed Stuart's demeanour and plunged him into a depression. He never again took time off work and left his children to the sole care and maintenance of his four maiden sisters in England. In 1934 he took over his last and most important seagoing role as Commodore of the CPS fleet and was placed in command of the 42,000-ton liner RMS Empress of Britain on her transatlantic route.
After three years in command of the Empress on the England to Quebec route, Stuart was given a desk job managing the company's assets in Montreal. In 1937, he was promoted to company superintendent, a role followed by the job of general manager at Canadian Pacific's London office. He retained this job for 13 years, including through the difficult experiences of World War II when London's dockyards were badly damaged by the London Blitz. Two of his sons served in the war; one in the Royal Navy and the other in the Royal Canadian Navy. Both were decorated for bravery while fighting in the Battle of the Atlantic against the resurgent German submarine fleet. One was presented with the Distinguished Service Cross, while the other was Mentioned in Despatches.
### Retirement
Retiring in 1951, Stuart retreated to his sisters' cottage in Charing, Kent, and spent his days reading, walking, observing nature and visiting the cinema, where he was reportedly notorious for "jeering embarrassingly loudly at falsely heroic, sentimental or emotional passages" and shouting "Mush!" at parts of movies he did not approve. He died aged 67 at the cottage on 8 February 1954 and was buried in local Charing Cemetery. For many years his gravestone was in a poor state of repair but it was later replaced with a standard white Commonwealth War Grave headstone. Following his death, 'Stuart Close' in Lee-on-Solent was named for him and his medals were collected and donated on permanent loan to the National Maritime Museum, where they are on display.
|
165,329 |
Baron Munchausen
| 1,171,304,112 |
Fictional German nobleman
|
[
"ATU 1875-1999",
"Baron Munchausen",
"Comedy literature characters",
"Cultural depictions of German men",
"Fictional German people in literature",
"Fictional barons and baronesses",
"Fictional characters based on real people",
"Fictional characters from Lower Saxony",
"German folklore",
"Literary characters introduced in 1785",
"Male characters in literature",
"Tall tales"
] |
Baron Munchausen (/ˈmʌntʃaʊzən, ˈmʊntʃ-/; ) is a fictional German nobleman created by the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe in his 1785 book Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia. The character is loosely based on baron Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen.
Born in Bodenwerder, Hanover, the real-life Münchhausen fought for the Russian Empire during the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739. After retiring in 1760, he became a minor celebrity within German aristocratic circles for telling outrageous tall tales based on his military career. After hearing some of Münchhausen's stories, Raspe adapted them anonymously into literary form, first in German as ephemeral magazine pieces and then in English as the 1785 book, which was first published in Oxford by a bookseller named Smith. The book was soon translated into other European languages, including a German version expanded by the poet Gottfried August Bürger. The real-life Münchhausen was deeply upset at the development of a fictional character bearing his name, and threatened legal proceedings against the book's publisher. Perhaps fearing a libel suit, Raspe never acknowledged his authorship of the work, which was only established posthumously.
The fictional Baron's exploits, narrated in the first person, focus on his impossible achievements as a sportsman, soldier, and traveller; for instance: riding on a cannonball, fighting a forty-foot crocodile, and travelling to the Moon. Intentionally comedic, the stories play on the absurdity and inconsistency of Munchausen's claims, and contain an undercurrent of social satire. The earliest illustrations of the character, perhaps created by Raspe himself, depict Munchausen as slim and youthful, although later illustrators have depicted him as an older man, and have added the sharply beaked nose and twirled moustache that have become part of the character's definitive visual representation. Raspe's book was a major international success, becoming the core text for numerous English, continental European, and American editions that were expanded and rewritten by other writers. The book in its various revised forms remained widely read throughout the 19th century, especially in editions for young readers.
Versions of the fictional Baron have appeared on stage, screen, radio, and television, as well as in other literary works. Though the Baron Munchausen stories are no longer well known in many English-speaking countries, they are still popular in continental Europe. The character has inspired numerous memorials and museums, and several medical conditions and other concepts are named after him.
## Historical figure
Hieronymus Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen was born on 11 May 1720 in Bodenwerder, Hanover. He was born into the "Black Line" of the Rinteln-Bodenwerder, an aristocratic family from Brunswick-Lüneburg. His cousin, Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen, was one of the founders of the University of Göttingen and served as the Hanoverian Prime Minister. At a young age, Münchhausen served as a page in the royal court of Duke Anthony Ulrich of Brunswick, following the duke to the Russian Empire during the Russo-Turkish War of 1737–1739. In 1739, he was appointed as a cornet in the Brunswick Cuirassiers, an Imperial Russian Army cavalry regiment. On 27 November 1740, Münchhausen was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Though he was stationed in Riga, Münchhausen participated in two military campaigns against the Ottoman Empire in 1740 and 1741. In 1744, he married Jacobine von Dunten, and six years later Münchhausen was again promoted to the rank of rotmistr.
In 1760, he retired and settled down on his estates in Bodenwerder to live as a Freiherr, remaining there until his death in 1797. It was during this period of his life, especially at dinners he would host for local aristocrats, that Münchhausen developed a reputation as an imaginative storyteller, creating witty and highly exaggerated accounts of his military career in Russia. Over the ensuing decades, his storytelling abilities gained such renown that he frequently received visits from travelling noblemen wishing to hear his tales. One guest described Münchhausen as telling his stories "cavalierly, indeed with military emphasis, yet without any concession to the whimsicality of the man of the world; describing his adventures as one would incidents which were in the natural course of events". However, rather than being considered a liar, Münchhausen was seen as an honest man. As another contemporary put it, Münchhausen's unbelievable narratives were designed not to deceive, but "to ridicule the disposition for the marvellous which he observed in some of his acquaintances".
Von Dunten died in 1790. In January 1794, Münchhausen married Bernardine von Brunn, a woman who was fifty-seven years his junior. Von Brunn reportedly became ill soon after the marriage and spent the summer of 1794 in the spa town of Bad Pyrmont, although contemporary gossip claimed that she spent her time there dancing and flirting. She gave birth to a daughter, Maria Wilhemina, on 16 February 1795, nine months after her summer trip. Münchhausen filed an official complaint that the child was not his, and spent the last years of his life in divorce proceedings and alimony litigation. Münchhausen died childless on 22 February 1797.
## Fictionalization
The fictionalized character was created by a German writer, scientist, and con artist, Rudolf Erich Raspe. Raspe probably met Hieronymus von Münchhausen while studying at the University of Göttingen, and may even have been invited to dine with him at the mansion at Bodenwerder. Raspe's later career mixed writing and scientific scholarship with theft and swindling; when the German police issued advertisements for his arrest in 1775, he fled continental Europe and settled in England.
In his native German language, Raspe wrote a collection of anecdotes inspired by Münchhausen's tales, calling the collection "M-h-s-nsche Geschichten" ("M-h-s-n Stories"). It remains unclear how much of Raspe's material comes directly from the Baron, but the majority of the stories are derived from older sources, including Heinrich Bebel's Facetiæ (1508) and Samuel Gotthold Lange's Deliciæ Academicæ (1765). "M-h-s-nsche Geschichten" appeared as a feature in the eighth issue of the Vade mecum für lustige Leute (Handbook for Fun-loving People), a Berlin humor magazine, in 1781. Raspe published a sequel, "Noch zwei M-Lügen" ("Two more M-Fibs"), in the tenth issue of the same magazine in 1783. The hero and narrator of these stories was identified only as "M-h-s-n", keeping Raspe's inspiration partly obscured while still allowing knowledgeable German readers to make the connection to Münchhausen. Raspe's name did not appear at all.
In 1785, while supervising mines at Dolcoath in Cornwall, Raspe adapted the Vade mecum anecdotes into a short English-language book, this time identifying the narrator of the book as "Baron Munchausen". Other than the anglicization of Münchhausen to "Munchausen", Raspe this time made no attempt to hide the identity of the man who had inspired him, though he still withheld his own name.
This English edition, the first version of the text in which Munchausen appeared as a fully developed literary character, had a circuitous publication history. It first appeared anonymously as Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, a 49-page book in 12mo size, published in Oxford by the bookseller Smith in late 1785 and sold for a shilling. A second edition released early the following year, retitled Singular Travels, Campaigns, Voyages, and Sporting Adventures of Baron Munnikhouson, commonly pronounced Munchausen, added five more stories and four illustrations; though the book was still anonymous, the new text was probably by Raspe, and the illustrations may have been his work as well.
By May 1786, Raspe no longer had control over the book, which was taken over by a different publisher, G. Kearsley. Kearsley, intending the book for a higher-class audience than the original editions had been, commissioned extensive additions and revisions from other hands, including new stories, twelve new engravings, and much rewriting of Raspe's prose. This third edition was sold at two shillings, twice the price of the original, as Gulliver Revived, or the Singular Travels, Campaigns, Voyages, and Adventures of Baron Munikhouson, commonly pronounced Munchausen.
Kearsley's version was a marked popular success. Over the next few years, the publishing house issued further editions in quick succession, adding still more non-Raspe material along the way; even the full-length Sequel to the Adventures of Baron Munchausen, again not by Raspe and originally published in 1792 by a rival printer, was quickly subsumed into the body of stories. In the process of revision, Raspe's prose style was heavily modified; instead of his conversational language and sportsmanlike turns of phrase, Kearsley's writers opted for a blander and more formal tone imitating Augustan prose. Most ensuing English-language editions, including even the major editions produced by Thomas Seccombe in 1895 and F. J. Harvey Darton in 1930, reproduce one of the rewritten Kearsley versions rather than Raspe's original text.
At least ten editions or translations of the book appeared before Raspe's death in 1794. Translations of the book into French, Spanish, and German were published in 1786. The text reached the United States in 1805, expanded to include American topical satire by an anonymous Federalist writer, probably Thomas Green Fessenden.
The first German translation, Wunderbare Reisen zu Wasser und Lande, was made by the German Romantic poet Gottfried August Bürger. Bürger's text is a close translation of Smith's second edition, but also includes an interpolated story, based on a German legend called "The Six Wonderful Servants". Two new engravings were added to illustrate the interpolated material. The German version of the stories proved to be even more popular than the English one. A second German edition in 1788 included heavily altered material from an expanded Kearsley edition, and an original German sequel, Nachtrag zu den wunderbaren Reisen zu Wasser und Lande, was published in 1789. After these publications, the English and Continental versions of the Raspe text continued to diverge, following increasingly different traditions of included material.
Raspe, probably for fear of a libel suit from the real-life Baron von Münchhausen, never admitted his authorship of the book. It was often credited to Bürger, sometimes with an accompanying rumor that the real-life Baron von Münchhausen had met Bürger in Pyrmont and dictated the entire work to him. Another rumor, which circulated widely soon after the German translation was published, claimed that it was a competitive collaboration by three University of Göttingen scholars—Bürger, Abraham Gotthelf Kästner, and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg—with each of the three trying to outdo one another by writing the most unbelievable tale. The scholar Johann Georg Meusel correctly credited Raspe for the core text, but mistakenly asserted that Raspe had written it in German and that an anonymous translator was responsible for the English version. Raspe's authorship was finally proven in 1824 by Bürger's biographer, Karl Reinhard.
In the first few years after publication, German readers widely assumed that the real-life Baron von Münchhausen was responsible for the stories. According to witnesses, Münchhausen was deeply angry that the book had dragged his name into public consciousness and insulted his honor as a nobleman. Münchhausen became a recluse, refusing to host parties or tell any more stories, and he attempted without success to bring legal proceedings against Bürger and the publisher of the translation.
### Publication history
The following tables summarize the early publication history of Raspe's text, from 1785 to 1800. Unless otherwise referenced, information in the tables comes from the Munchausen bibliography established by John Patrick Carswell.
## Fictional character
The fictional Baron Munchausen is a braggart soldier, most strongly defined by his comically exaggerated boasts about his own adventures. All of the stories in Raspe's book are told in first-person narrative, with a prefatory note explaining that "the Baron is supposed to relate these extraordinary Adventures over his Bottle, when surrounded by his Friends". The Baron's stories imply him to be a superhuman figure who spends most of his time either getting out of absurd predicaments or indulging in equally absurd moments of gentle mischief. In some of his best-known stories, the Baron rides a cannonball, travels to the Moon, is swallowed by a giant fish in the Mediterranean Sea, saves himself from drowning by pulling up on his own hair, fights a forty-foot crocodile, enlists a wolf to pull his sleigh, and uses laurel tree branches to fix his horse when the animal is accidentally cut in two.
In the stories he narrates, the Baron is shown as a calm, rational man, describing what he experiences with simple objectivity; absurd happenings elicit, at most, mild surprise from him, and he shows serious doubt about any unlikely events he has not witnessed himself. The resulting narrative effect is an ironic tone, encouraging skepticism in the reader and marked by a running undercurrent of subtle social satire. In addition to his fearlessness when hunting and fighting, he is suggested to be a debonair, polite gentleman given to moments of gallantry, with a scholarly penchant for knowledge, a tendency to be pedantically accurate about details in his stories, and a deep appreciation for food and drink of all kinds. The Baron also provides a solid geographical and social context for his narratives, peppering them with topical allusions and satire about recent events; indeed, many of the references in Raspe's original text are to historical incidents in the real-life Münchhausen's military career.
Because the feats the Baron describes are overtly implausible, they are easily recognizable as fiction, with a strong implication that the Baron is a liar. Whether he expects his audience to believe him varies from version to version; in Raspe's original 1785 text, he simply narrates his stories without further comment, but in the later extended versions he is insistent that he is telling the truth. In any case, the Baron appears to believe every word of his own stories, no matter how internally inconsistent they become, and he usually appears tolerantly indifferent to any disbelief he encounters in others.
Illustrators of the Baron stories have included Thomas Rowlandson, Alfred Crowquill, George Cruikshank, Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen, Theodor Hosemann, Adolf Schrödter, Gustave Doré, William Strang, W. Heath Robinson, and Ronald Searle. The Finnish-American cartoonist Klaus Nordling featured the Baron in a weekly Baron Munchausen comic strip from 1935 to 1937, and in 1962, Raspe's text was adapted for Classics Illustrated \#146 (British series), with both interior and cover art by the British cartoonist Denis Gifford.
In the first published illustrations, which may have been drawn by Raspe himself, the Baron appears slim and youthful. For the 1792 Sequel to the Adventures of Baron Munchausen, an anonymous artist drew the Baron as a dignified but tired old soldier whose face is marred by injuries from his adventures; this illustration remained the standard portrait of the Baron for about seventy years, and its imagery was echoed in Cruikshank's depictions of the character. Doré, illustrating a Théophile Gautier fils translation in 1862, retained the sharply beaked nose and twirled moustache from the 1792 portrait, but gave the Baron a healthier and more affable appearance; the Doré Baron became the definitive visual representation for the character.
The relationship between the real and fictional Barons is complex. On the one hand, the fictional Baron Munchausen can be easily distinguished from the historical figure Hieronymus von Münchhausen; the character is so separate from his namesake that at least one critic, the writer W. L. George, concluded that the namesake's identity was irrelevant to the general reader, and Richard Asher named Munchausen syndrome using the anglicized spelling so that the disorder would reference the character rather than the real person. On the other hand, Münchhausen remains strongly connected to the character he inspired, and is still nicknamed the Lügenbaron ("Baron of Lies") in German. As the Munchausen researcher Bernhard Wiebel has said, "These two barons are the same and they are not the same."
## Critical and popular reception
Reviewing the first edition of Raspe's book in December 1785, a writer in The Critical Review commented appreciatively:
> This is a satirical production calculated to throw ridicule on the bold assertions of some parliamentary declaimers. If rant may be best foiled at its own weapons, the author's design is not ill-founded; for the marvellous has never been carried to a more whimsical and ludicrous extent.
At around the same time, English Review was less approving: "We do not understand how a collection of lies can be called a satire on lying, any more than the adventures of a woman of pleasure can be called a satire on fornication."
W. L. George described the fictional Baron as a "comic giant" of literature, describing his boasts as "splendid, purposeless lie[s] born of the joy of life". Théophile Gautier fils highlighted that the Baron's adventures are endowed with an "absurd logic pushed to the extreme and which backs away from nothing". According to an interview, Jules Verne relished reading the Baron stories as a child, and used them as inspiration for his own adventure novels. Thomas Seccombe commented that "Munchausen has undoubtedly achieved [a permanent place in literature] ... The Baron's notoriety is universal, his character proverbial, and his name as familiar as that of Mr. Lemuel Gulliver, or Robinson Crusoe."
Steven T. Byington wrote that "Munchausen's modest seat in the Valhalla of classic literature is undisputed", comparing the stories to American tall tales and concluding that the Baron is "the patriarch, the perfect model, the fadeless fragrant flower, of liberty from accuracy". The folklore writer Alvin Schwartz cited the Baron stories as one of the most important influences on the American tall tale tradition. In a 2012 study of the Baron, the literary scholar Sarah Tindal Kareem noted that "Munchausen embodies, in his deadpan presentation of absurdities, the novelty of fictionality [and] the sophistication of aesthetic illusion", adding that the additions to Raspe's text made by Kearsley and others tend to mask these ironic literary qualities by emphasizing that the Baron is lying.
By the beginning of the 19th century, Kearsley's phenomenally popular version of Raspe's book had spread to abridged chapbook editions for young readers, who soon became the main audience for the stories. The book, especially in its adaptations for children, remained widely popular throughout the century. It was translated into nearly all languages spoken in Europe; Robert Southey referred to it as "a book which everybody knows, because all boys read it". Notable later translations include Gautier's French rendering and Korney Chukovsky's popular Russian adaptation. By the 1850s, Munchausen had come into slang use as a verb meaning "to tell extravagantly untruthful pseudo-autobiographical stories". Robert Chambers, in an 1863 almanac, cited the iconic 1792 illustration of the Baron by asking rhetorically:
> Who is there that has not, in his youth, enjoyed The Surprising Travels and Adventures of Baron Munchausen in Russia, the Caspian Sea, Iceland, Turkey, &c. a slim volume—all too short, indeed—illustrated by a formidable portrait of the baron in front, with his broad-sword laid over his shoulder, and several deep gashes on his manly countenance? I presume they must be few.
Though Raspe's book is no longer widely read by English-speakers, the Munchausen stories remain popular in Europe, especially in Germany and in Russia.
## In culture
### Literature
As well as the many augmented and adapted editions of Raspe's text, the fictional Baron has occasionally appeared in other standalone works. In 1838–39, Karl Leberecht Immermann published the long novel Münchhausen: Eine Geschichte in Arabesken (Münchhausen: A History of Arabesques) as an homage to the character, and Adolf Ellissen's Munchausens Lügenabenteur, an elaborate expansion of the stories, appeared in 1846. In his 1886 philosophical treatise Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche uses one of the Baron's adventures, the one in which he rescues himself from a swamp, as a metaphor for belief in complete metaphysical free will; Nietzsche calls this belief an attempt "to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness". Another philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, references the same adventure in a diary entry from 11.4.1937; his note records his having dreamt saying "But let us talk in our mother tongue, and not believe that we must pull ourselves out of the swamp by our own hair; that was – thank God – only a dream, after all. To God alone be praise!"
In the late 19th century, the Baron appeared as a character in John Kendrick Bangs's comic novels A House-Boat on the Styx, Pursuit of the House-Boat, and The Enchanted Type-Writer. Shortly after, in 1901, Bangs published Mr. Munchausen, a collection of new Munchausen stories, closely following the style and humor of the original tales. Hugo Gernsback's second novel, Baron Münchhausen's New Scientific Adventures, put the Baron character in a science fiction setting; the novel was serialized in The Electrical Experimenter from May 1915 to February 1917.
Pierre Henri Cami's character Baron de Crac, a French soldier and courtier under Louis XV, is an imitation of the Baron Munchausen stories. In 1998, the British game designer James Wallis used the Baron character to create a multi-player storytelling game, The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, in which players improvise Munchausen-like first-person stories while overcoming objections and other interruptions from opponents. The American writer Peter David had the Baron narrate an original short story, "Diego and the Baron", in 2018.
### Stage and audio
Sadler's Wells Theatre produced the pantomime Baron Munchausen; or, Harlequin's Travels in London in 1795, starring the actor-singer-caricaturist Robert Dighton as the Baron; another pantomime based on the Raspe text, Harlequin Munchausen, or the Fountain of Love, was produced in London in 1818. Herbert Eulenberg made the Baron the main character of a 1900 play, Münchhausen, and the Expressionist writer Walter Hasenclever turned the stories into a comedy, Münchhausen, in 1934. Grigori Gorin used the Baron as the hero of his 1976 play That Very Munchausen; a film version was made in 1980. Baron Prášil, a Czech musical about the Baron, opened in 2010 in Prague. The following year, the National Black Light Theatre of Prague toured the United Kingdom with a nonmusical production of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
In 1932, the comedy writer Billy Wells adapted Baron Munchausen for a radio comedy routine starring the comedians Jack Pearl and Cliff Hall. In the routine, Pearl's Baron would relate his unbelievable experiences in a thick German accent to Hall's "straight man" character, Charlie. When Charlie had had enough and expressed disbelief, the Baron would invariably retort: "Vass you dere, Sharlie?" The line became a popular and much-quoted catchphrase, and by early 1933 The Jack Pearl Show was the second most popular series on American radio (after Eddie Cantor's program). Pearl attempted to adapt his portrayal to film in Meet the Baron in 1933, playing a modern character mistaken for the Baron, but the film was not a success. Pearl's popularity gradually declined between 1933 and 1937, though he attempted to revive the Baron character several times before ending his last radio series in 1951.
For a 1972 Caedmon Records recording of some of the stories, Peter Ustinov voiced the Baron. A review in The Reading Teacher noted that Ustinov's portrayal highlighted "the braggadocio personality of the Baron", with "self-adulation ... plainly discernible in the intonational innuendo".
### Film
The early French filmmaker Georges Méliès, who greatly admired the Baron Munchausen stories, filmed Baron Munchausen's Dream in 1911. Méliès's short silent film, which has little in common with the Raspe text, follows a sleeping Baron through a surrealistic succession of intoxication-induced dreams. Méliès may also have used the Baron's journey to the moon as an inspiration for his well-known 1902 film A Trip to the Moon. In the late 1930s, he planned to collaborate with the Dada artist Hans Richter on a new film version of the Baron stories, but the project was left unfinished at his death in 1938. Richter attempted to complete it the following year, taking on Jacques Prévert, Jacques Brunius, and Maurice Henry as screenwriters, but the beginning of the Second World War put a permanent halt to the production.
The French animator Émile Cohl produced a version of the stories using silhouette cutout animation in 1913; other animated versions were produced by Richard Felgenauer in Germany in 1920, and by Paul Peroff in the United States in 1929. Colonel Heeza Liar, the protagonist of the first animated cartoon series in cinema history, was created by John Randolph Bray in 1913 as an amalgamation of the Baron and Teddy Roosevelt. The Italian director Paolo Azzurri filmed The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in 1914, and the British director F. Martin Thornton made a short silent film featuring the Baron, The New Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the following year. In 1940, the Czech director Martin Frič filmed Baron Prášil, starring the comic actor Vlasta Burian as a 20th-century descendant of the Baron.
For the German film studio U.F.A. GmbH's 25th anniversary in 1943, Joseph Goebbels hired the filmmaker Josef von Báky to direct Münchhausen, a big-budget color film about the Baron. David Stewart Hull describes Hans Albers's Baron as "jovial but somewhat sinister", while Tobias Nagle writes that Albers imparts "a male and muscular zest for action and testosterone-driven adventure". A German musical comedy, Münchhausen in Afrika, made as a vehicle for the Austrian singing star Peter Alexander, appeared in 1957. Karel Zeman's 1961 Czech film The Fabulous Baron Munchausen commented on the Baron's adventures from a contemporary perspective, highlighting the importance of the poetic imagination to scientific achievement; Zeman's stylized mise-en-scène, based on Doré's illustrations for the book, combined animation with live-action actors, including Miloš Kopecký as the Baron.
In the Soviet Union, in 1929, Daniil Cherkes released a cartoon, Adventures of Munchausen. Soviet Soyuzmultfilm released a 16-minute stop-motion animation Adventures of Baron Munchausen in 1967, directed by Anatoly Karanovich. Another Soviet animated version was produced as a series of short films, Munchausen's Adventures, in 1973 and 1974. The French animator Jean Image filmed The Fabulous Adventures of the Legendary Baron Munchausen [fr] in 1979, and followed it with a 1984 sequel, Moon Madness.
Oleg Yankovsky appeared as the Baron in the 1979 Russian television film The Very Same Munchhausen, directed by Mark Zakharov from Grigori Gorin's screenplay, produced and released by Mosfilm. The film, a satirical commentary on Soviet censorship and social mores, imagines an ostracized Baron attempting to prove the truth of his adventures in a disbelieving and conformity-driven world.
In 1988, Terry Gilliam adapted the Raspe stories into a lavish Hollywood film, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, with the British stage actor and director John Neville in the lead role. Roger Ebert, in his review of the film, described Neville's Baron as a man who "seems sensible and matter-of-fact, as anyone would if they had spent a lifetime growing accustomed to the incredible".
The German actor Jan Josef Liefers starred in a 2012 two-part television film titled Baron on the Cannonball [de]; according to a Spiegel Online review, his characterization of the Baron strongly resembled Johnny Depp's performance as Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series.
## Legacy
### Memorials
In 2004, a fan club calling itself Munchausen's Grandchildren was founded in the Russian city of Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg). The club's early activities included identifying "historical proofs" of the fictional Baron's travels through Königsberg, such as a jackboot supposedly belonging to the Baron and a sperm whale skeleton said to be that of the whale in whose belly the Baron was trapped.
On 18 June 2005, to celebrate the 750th anniversary of Kaliningrad, a monument to the Baron was unveiled as a gift from Bodenwerder, portraying the Baron's cannonball ride. Bodenwerder sports a Munchausen monument in front of its Town Hall, as well as a Munchausen museum including a large collection of illustrated editions of the stories. Another Munchausen Museum (Minhauzena Muzejs) exists in Duntes Muiža, Liepupe parish, Latvia, home of the real Baron's first wife; the couple had lived in the town for six years, before moving back to the baronial estate in Hanover. In 2005, to mark the real-life Baron's 285th birthday, the National Bank of Latvia issued a commemorative silver coin.
### Nomenclature
In 1951, the British physician Richard Asher published an article in The Lancet describing patients whose factitious disorders led them to lie about their own states of health. Asher proposed to call the disorder "Munchausen's syndrome", commenting: "Like the famous Baron von Munchausen, the persons affected have always travelled widely; and their stories, like those attributed to him, are both dramatic and untruthful. Accordingly, the syndrome is respectfully dedicated to the baron, and named after him". The disease is now usually referred to as Munchausen syndrome. The name has spawned two other coinages: Munchausen syndrome by proxy, in which illness is feigned by caretakers rather than patients, and Munchausen by Internet, in which illness is feigned online.
In 1968, Hans Albert coined the term Münchhausen trilemma to describe the philosophical problem inherent in having to derive conclusions from premises; those premises have to be derived from still other premises, and so on forever, leading to an infinite regress interruptible only by circular logic or dogmatism. The problem is named after the similarly paradoxical story in which the Baron saves himself from being drowned in a swamp by pulling on his own hair. The same story also inspired the mathematical term Munchausen number, coined by Daan van Berkel in 2009 to describe numbers whose digits, when raised to their own powers, can be added together to form the number itself (for example, 3435 = 3<sup>3</sup> + 4<sup>4</sup> + 3<sup>3</sup> + 5<sup>5</sup>).
Subclass ATU1889 of the Aarne–Thompson–Uther classification system, a standard index of folklore, was named "Münchhausen Tales" in tribute to the stories.
`In 1994, a main belt asteroid was named 14014 Münchhausen in honor of both the real and the fictional Baron.`
|
6,788,550 |
Seacology
| 1,144,437,817 |
Nonprofit organization in the United States
|
[
"1991 establishments in California",
"501(c)(3) organizations",
"Conservation projects",
"Environmental organizations based in the San Francisco Bay Area",
"Nature conservation in Samoa",
"Nature conservation organizations based in the United States",
"Organizations based in Berkeley, California",
"Organizations established in 1991",
"Water resource policy"
] |
Seacology is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization headquartered in Berkeley, California, that works to preserve island ecosystems and cultures around the world. Founded in 1991, it began with the work of ethnobotanist Paul Alan Cox, who researched tropical plants and their medicinal value in the village of Falealupo in Samoa during the mid-1980s. When the villagers were pressured into selling logging rights to their rainforest in 1988 to build a new school, Cox and his wife offered to help secure funds for the new school in return for an agreement with the villagers to protect their forest. With the help of his friends and family, Cox secured the funds within six months, later earning him and the village chief, Fuiono Senio, the Goldman Environmental Prize for their efforts. Word spread throughout the islands, and with increasing demand for similar projects, Cox, along with Bill Marré and Ken Murdock, decided to form Seacology and expand their work internationally. For the first few years, the organization operated on a volunteer basis.
Because of the high risk of extinction for island fauna and the decline in coral reef ecosystems, Seacology's primary focus is projects in which villagers sign contracts under which they agree to help protect either terrestrial or marine habitat for a specified time in return for new buildings or services. The operations are low-cost, averaging around US\$20,000 to \$25,000. Construction is done with local labor and sometimes without the use of machinery. Seacology selects its projects by reviewing the recommendations of its field representatives and its scientific advisory board.
By 2020, Seacology had initiated more than 320 projects globally, and helped preserve 760,879 acres (3,079 km<sup>2</sup>; 1,189 sq mi) of marine habitat and 579,700 acres (2,346 km<sup>2</sup>; 905.8 sq mi) of terrestrial habitat. At the same time, they had helped construct new facilities and provided programs including educational materials, vital medical services, and environmental training. In addition to helping local people on islands like those in Fiji, the Philippines, and many others, their projects have helped protect mangrove forests, sea turtles, dugongs, and one of the rarest primates in the world: the Hainan black crested gibbon. Seacology also awards an annual Seacology Prize to indigenous islanders for their efforts in conservation and cultural preservation. The organization helps support island communities by fostering ecotourism, and has helped raise emergency funds following destructive tsunamis and other natural disasters. Its budget is modest, and it does not compensate its board members. It has won awards from Yahoo! and Travel + Leisure magazine, and has been featured in the music video "What About Now" by the American rock band Daughtry.
## History
Seacology was founded in 1991 by ethnobotanist Paul Alan Cox and his wife Barbara in 1991 resulting from his efforts to preserve 30,000 acres (120 km<sup>2</sup>; 47 sq mi) of rainforest outside the village of Falealupo on the island of Savai'i in Samoa. He later recorded these events in his book, Nafanua: Saving the Samoan Rain Forest. Cox volunteered in Samoa for two years from 1973 to 1974 as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at which time he became fluent in common and chiefly Samoan, and deeply enamored of Samoan culture. After returning to Samoa for field work during his PhD studies in rain forest biology at Harvard University, and acquiring competency in Tongan and other Polynesian languages, Cox used funds from a Presidential Young Investigator Award given him by President Ronald Reagan to return with his young family to the remote island of Savaii in Samoa. His aim was to find a cure for metastatic breast cancer, which had claimed the life of his mother, scientist Rae G. Cox, earlier the previous year. In return for the help of the local healers (called fofo), and with the permission of the local village chiefs and the Prime Minister of Samoa, Cox prevailed on his colleagues at the U. S. National Cancer Institute to share the revenue generated by his search for new drugs with the local villages and the Samoan government. Over time, his research identified the therapeutic agent prostratin, a potential treatment for HIV. Prostratin was isolated in a concoction made from the bark of the local mamala tree (Homalanthus nutans) and shared with him by a traditional healer named Epenesa Mauigoa, who used it to treat hepatitis. Cox set up royalty agreements with the National Cancer Institute and Brigham Young University to ensure that the Samoans will share in any commercial development of the drug.
In 1988, the rain forest was threatened when the Samoan government pressured the village of Falealupo to pay \$85,000 for a new school, warning that if the village did not provide a new school within a year, they would withdraw the teachers from the village, leaving the children without an opportunity for a formal education. Shortly after receiving this notice from government, a foreign-owned logging company offered the village exactly \$85,000 to log the entire 30,000 acres (120 km<sup>2</sup>; 47 sq mi) surrounding Falealupo. Lacking a source of revenue, the villages eventually sold the logging rights to the forest, but when Cox learned of the situation and witnessed the logging for himself, he immediately sought an explanation from the village chiefs and then requested that they halt the logging so that he could raise money for the school. Despite initial skepticism, Cox addressed the assembled village chiefs and convinced the high orator, Fuiono Senio, who then helped persuade the rest of the elders. Senio and another chief then took their machete and raced 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) to halt the logging.
The new school was built after Cox and his wife, Barbara, were able to raise the money in six months by offering to mortgage their house in the United States. Cox arranged with the Samoan Development Bank to immediately take over payments on the mortgage for the school. Verne Read, a businessman and financial supporter of Bat Conservation International, subsequently assumed payments on the mortgage for the school until the completed funds could be raised. Ken Murdock, founder of the herbal company Nature's Way, and Rex Maughan, owner of Forever Living Products, together with Cox, his family, and students funded the construction of the school and repaid the loggers for their \$20,000 advance. During a large village ceremony held in January 1989, Cox, along with the village chiefs (matai) signed "The Falealupo Covenant", which legally protected the forest for 50 years in exchange for their help. During the ceremony, the village chiefs also bestowed high chief's titles on Murdock and Maughan. To Cox's surprise, the chiefs proclaimed that Cox was a reincarnation of an ancient deity, Nafanua, because like Nafanua, he did not come from Samoa and both had fought to protect the village and the forest. This bestowal of one of the highest national titles was registered with the Samoan Lands and Title Court, and made national news throughout Samoa and the islands of Polynesia; in Manu'a, Fiji, Tonga, Tahiti, and other islands of Polynesia, Cox is commonly referred to by his title, Nafanua, rather than his Christian name.
In 1992, Cox, his Swedish postdoctoral student Dr. Thomas Elmqvist, and their colleagues at the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation helped protect the lowland rainforest of Tafua on the opposite side of the island, which encountered the same problem. Prior to that, Murdock, who later subsequently became Seacology's President, suggested continuing their work by seeking out more villages with which they could exchange projects for marine and forest reserves. As demand among island villages grew, Bill Marré, a business consultant and executive coach who later became a member of the board of trustees and the Chairman's Advisory Council, suggested establishing a nonprofit organization to continue their work. He suggested the name "Seacology" to reflect the organization's focus on conservation both terrestrial and marine habitats in islands, and helped cofound the nonprofit in 1991, along with Cox and Murdock. Using his own funds, Marré paid the costs of starting the organization and covered its administrative costs for the first three years. Together with his assistant Rita Despain, Marré helped advertise Seacology by giving lectures at schools and universities, visiting other island nations, and writing articles about the work for the local media.
In Falealupo, Seacology continued their work, funding projects with a total of \$485,000 as of 2005. When cyclone Ofa destroyed the primary school at Falealupo in 1990, Seacology helped raise funds to rebuild it. The school was completely rebuilt again in 1991 following Cyclone Val. Several years after completing the school, the organization helped establish trails and build a rainforest information center, followed in 1997 by an elevated canopy walkway as part of an ecotourism project to help generate ecotourism income for the peopleusing a grant from Nu Skin International and provide funds for a retirement system for the village elders. The walkway has since become one of Samoa's leading tourist attractions, and was yielding an average of \$1,000 each month for the community in 2001—bringing in more money than the villagers would have earned from selling their forest. Satisfied with the results, the villagers at Falealupo declared that they would honor the contract they had made with Cox to protect the forest forever, rather than just 50 years. In 1997, both Cox and Senio, the village chief, shared the Goldman Environmental Prize for their work. Cox gifted his share of the Goldman Prize funds to Seacology as an endowment for the Falealupo Rain Forest and other island rain projects. Proceeds have been used to help the village maintain the Falealupo Rain Forest canopy walkway.
For the first six years of its existence, Seacology operated as a volunteer organization with no employees. Four years after being founded, Seacology's administrative office moved to Ken Murdock's office. The office moved again in 1999 to Berkeley, California after Cox offered a job to Duane Silverstein—then the Executive Director of the Goldman Fund, which had previously honored Cox with the Goldman Environmental Prize. Silverstein had been inspired by the work Cox had done in Samoa, and agreed to take the position of Executive Director of Seacology under the condition that the office be relocated to within walking distance of his house. As a former Miller Research Fellow at Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Cox rapidly approved the move of Seacology to Berkeley.
In 2007, Seacology became an international organization with greater visibility, despite their small staff. International affiliate programs, such as Seacology Germany and Seacology Japan were created to help raise funds to support island projects. The following year, Seacology U.K. was created, followed by Seacology Scandinavia in 2009.
For its global efforts, Seacology has received several awards, including the Global Vision Award in Travel + Leisure, the Blue Award in Islands Magazine, and Yahoo!'s Pick for Good in September 2006. Others have included, the Prince’s Prize for Innovative Nonprofits Laureate, awarded by Albert II, Prince of Monaco and a Momentum For Change award, given by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Seacology was also nominated for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.
## Activities
Seacology is a nonprofit organization that works to preserve both island habitats and cultures by exchanging services for local assistance and cooperation with conservation efforts. As of 2000, it was reported to be the only conservation organization to focus entirely on island preservation. Seacology has 501(c)(3) status (providing federal income tax deductions for some American donors) because it is a charitable, non-profit organization. According to its mission statement on its website, "Seacology searches for win-win situations where both the local environment is protected and islanders receive some tangible benefit for doing so."
Islands constitute a large portion of the world's surface. Combined, the largest 125 islands cover an area the size of Europe, and if the economic zones that include marine resources (found within a few miles of shore) are included, islands make up one-sixth of the Earth's surface area and hold half of all marine species. Scientific surveys have shown that coral reefs, which surround many islands, are declining rapidly due to climate change, dynamite and cyanide fishing, and marine pollution. According to evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson, bird species that are endemic to islands face a greater risk of extinction—40 times greater than on the continents. At least 255 island bird species have become extinct since the appearance of humans, with 158 lost during prehistory and 97 lost between 1600 and 1994. In comparison, between 17 and 20 species of continental birds became extinct between 1600 and 1994. Because the small land area of islands can only support small populations, the biggest threat to endemic wildlife is habitat loss. Other threats include direct exploitation (hunting and pet trade), disease, and invasive species.
To save island habitats around the world, Seacology staff initiate projects by first holding meetings with local villagers to determine their needs. These needs often include schools, a community center, solar energy, or freshwater delivery. Once their needs are determined, Seacology makes a deal with the local community, offering to provide the needed public work in return for a forest reserve or a no-take fishing area around a coral reef. Facilities such as schools and community centers are built using local labor, and Seacology provides approximately \$20,000 for supplies and to facilitate the construction. Seacology has field representatives stationed around the world who monitor and report the progress of the projects in their region, as well as seek new projects in their respective regions or islands. New project suggestions are reviewed by the Board of Directors. The Scientific Advisory Board provide additional recommendations, based on the latest research.
In addition to their Seacology projects, Cox, Verne and Marion Read, and Bat Conservation International founder Dr. Merlin Tuttle spurred the creation of the National Park of American Samoa with the United States Congress and American Samoan Governor A. P. Lutali. In 2008, Seacology started its Carbon Offset Fund, where donations of \$40.00 went directly towards renewable energy and reforestation projects. That same year, they collaboratively funded the creation of a nursery run by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Azafady in Madagascar to raise 3,000 seedlings of the endangered palm Dypsis saintelucei. The two organizations have also collaborated to protect the Manafiafy Forest in southeastern Madagascar. In Bunaken and Manado, Seacology was involved in testing a new method of restoring coral reef, which involved planting white ceramic modules that were shaped like 3-dimensional snowflakes to maximize the surface area for corals to grow.
### Projects
According to their 2020 Annual Report, Seacology has funded over 300 projects globally. The island communities that have aided in these efforts have collectively received facilities, including schools, community centers, and other important structures. Educational materials, vital medical services, and environmental training have been provided in many programs.
When projects are agreed upon with an island community, local rituals often coincide with the start of the project, particularly in the Pacific Islands, where a common custom involves drinking kava, a mildly narcotic drink made from the ground-up root of a pepper plant. The ritual is hundreds of years old, and has been described by the Seacology staff as being relaxing, especially because of the friendly environment. Seacology staff often dress in local attire. The villagers perform dances, and the staff are invited to join in, often to the amusement of the villagers.
When the projects begin, the work is done without machines, with supplies being shipped on small boats and then carried by hand from the beach. Project costs range between \$5,000 and \$150,000, although the average is between \$20,000 and \$25,000. The protected areas that result from these deals typically involve a 20- to 30-year commitment. Seacology hopes that during that time the local people grow to respect these resources and ideally progress to a point where they are less dependent on natural resources. According to marine biologist Mark Erdmann, in a worst-case scenario, if the people violate the contract and destroy the habitat, Seacology will have still made a difference in their lives through its low-cost investment, whereas larger conservation organizations might invest large sums of money but through not addressing the immediate needs of the people, if the project fails, both lose that investment and not have helped the community.
In one of Seacology's projects, villagers in Fiji refused a \$700,000 offer by foreign businessmen to buy one of the islands and signed an agreement that prohibited development for 20 years and established a 10-year no-take fishing reserve encompassing 80 square miles (210 km<sup>2</sup>) around the island. On the island of Kendhoo, part of the Baa Atoll in the Maldives, Seacology paid \$30,000 in 2003 to build a kindergarten in exchange for a ban on harvesting endangered sea turtle eggs, which the government did not prohibit. In the Trang Province of Thailand, another project helps protect the habitat of seagrass beds and mangrove forest to provide habitat for endangered marine mammals called dugongs (Dugong dugon). In 2003, Seacology and a Chinese organization worked together to form an agreement with the people of Hainan Island where in return for scholarships for nearly 200 middle-school children, the people would stop cutting down the trees around Hainan Bawangling National Nature Reserve, home to one of the rarest primates in the world, the Hainan black crested gibbon (Nomascus nasutus hainanus) and the nearly extinct subspecies of Eld's deer (Panolia eldii) found on Hainan. In a project on Cát Bà Island in Vietnam, the organization helped protect the golden-headed langur, another one of the world's most endangered primates, by paying cash and helping establish exclusive harvesting and fishing rights for the local people in return for their efforts in patrolling the beaches and forests for poachers. In 1999, Seacology began work to establish a new national park around Mt. Angavokely, near Antananarivo in Madagascar. The mountain is home to 120 species of endangered orchids and several medicinal herbs, including Helichrysum gymnocephalum, which is used as an antiseptic and treatment for bronchitis; Secneicia faujasiodides, which is used for healing wounds; Psiadia altissima, which is used to treat eczema; Bryophyllum proliferum, which is used to treat coughing; and Brachylaena ramiflora, which is used to lower malarial fever.
### Sri Lanka Mangrove Conservation Project
In 2015, Seacology launched its largest-ever project, a \$3.4 million initiative to protect all of Sri Lanka's remaining mangrove forests and restore many degraded ones. Through Sri Lanka-based NGO Sudeesa (also known as the Small Fishers Federation of Lanka), Seacology is funding a significant expansion of that organization's existing microloan and job-training programs for impoverished coastal women. In exchange, the beneficiaries of these programs must agree to assist in protecting their local mangrove habitats. The training is designed in part to give low-income women in these communities alternatives to harvesting mangroves, a subsistence activity that has contributed to the forests' degradation. The project also established three large nursery facilities to grow several species of mangroves, to be replanted in areas previously cleared for aquaculture and other unsustainable development, as well as several areas destroyed during the Sri Lankan Civil War.
The effort is endorsed by the government of Sri Lanka, which has agreed to assist with demarcating the country's mangroves. The Sri Lankan navy has assisted with the effort to replant mangroves in several deforested areas, and President Maithripala Sirisena has attended several Sudeesa functions, including the opening of a museum funded by the project designed to educate visitors about the mangrove ecosystem's ecological and economic importance. In 2018, the project was named as one of 15 winners of the climate action award given by Momentum For Change, a project of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Sri Lanka was also selected by the Commonwealth of Nations to lead a new committee to advise the 53-country organization on best practices for mangrove conservation.
### Dominican Republic National Mangrove Initiative
Following the successes of its first nationwide project, Seacology began considering a similar effort in another island country.
In 2021 the organization officially launched a five-year partnership with local NGO Grupo Jaragua in the Dominican Republic. Similar to the one in Sri Lanka, the initiative focuses on mangrove conservation, but differs in approach by prioritizing environmental education and awareness, and supporting ecotourism and other sustainable livelihood activities.
### Seacology Prize
Created by founder Cox in 1992 and underwritten by Ken Murdock in honor of his mother, the Seacology Prize is awarded each year to an indigenous islander based on achievements in island conservation and cultural preservation. Many of the award recipients are people who risk their lives and wellbeing to preserve their culture and environment but receive little or no public recognition for their work. The prize includes a reward of \$10,000.
In 2010, it was awarded to Rabary Desiré from Matsobe-Sud in Madagascar for his forest conservation efforts in Belaoka Marovato in northeastern Madagascar. Rabary, an ecotour and research guide, had created his own forest reserve, called Antanetiambo (meaning "on the high hill"), and planned to use his prize money to fund reforestation efforts, develop tourist facilities, and expand the reserve. Another winner of the Seacology Prize was the Icelandic filmmaker and former reporter for RÚV Ómar Ragnarsson, who won the award in 2008 for his efforts in preserving the highlands of Iceland. In 2017, the prize was awarded to Filipino environmentalist and philanthropist Gina Lopez for her brave battle against multi-million mining corporations in the Philippines, which led to a massive public discourse and perception against mining in island ecosystems.
### Ecotourism
In response to the growing demand for ecotourism, Seacology opened up its fundraising expeditions to the public in 2006. These trips include destinations like Fiji, and offer both unusual travel opportunities and a means to help improve the quality of life for the indigenous people. The experiences have been described as "moving" because of the close personal interactions with the local people. Some tours visit locations seldom visited by Westerners. On the tours, Seacology encourages travelers to explore the culture and economy by trying local foods.
Following the 2002 Bali bombings, Silverstein reported that tourism fell by over 90 percent on the island of Bali, mostly due to sensational media reporting. He was in Bali a few days after the attack and reported that he saw little or no risk to tourists in the Muslim villages of the region.
### Tsunami relief funds
Following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Seacology established a tsunami relief fund to help four impacted communities with which the organization had previously completed projects. Following the model of their projects, the Seacology staff asked the local people what they needed to rebuild their economy and infrastructure. In Kiralakele, Sri Lanka, the people requested fishing nets and boats. The people of Kadachang Village in the Andaman Islands requested goats and chickens. On Kendhoo in the Maldives, the tsunami had destroyed the local plant life, so seedlings were needed in order to restore the environment. In Trang Province, Thailand, basic structural repair was requested. Seacology emphasized that it would repair and replace the projects that had been damaged or destroyed in the tsunami.
As of late 2005, Seacology had raised \$261,716 for the relief work, with all of it going directly to fund the efforts. All donors received details of how the money was spent, as well as photos of the work. The California Association of Nonprofits later honored Seacology for the relief work with their Achievement in Innovation Award.
Previous work by Seacology in the region had helped minimize the damage caused by the tsunami. Seacology Prize recipient Anuradha Wickramasinghe from Sri Lanka noted that the mangrove forests that were preserved shielded the community, whereas nearby villages that had cleared their mangroves to create industrial shrimp farms had not fared so well. Mangroves also buffered Kadachang Village in the hard-hit Andaman Islands; the village suffered little loss of human life or structural damage compared to the nation's capital city of Port Blair.
Following the 2009 Samoa tsunami, Seacology once again started a tsunami relief effort. They helped Samoan villages by providing new water tanks and pipelines, and also helped to clean up mangroves and inshore coral reefs that were littered with debris from nearby motels.
## Finances
Seacology is a small nonprofit, with only eight full-time staff, and as a result has little overhead costs and operates on a modest budget. Its tax identification number is 87-0495235. According to Silverstein, its annual budget for all of its staff and office expenditures is significantly lower than the median compensation for business chief executive officers (CEOs) alone. Board members receive no compensation and are not reimbursed for the costs of attending board meetings. Unlike other environmental groups, Seacology does not offer memberships, which further reduces its expenditures. Staff answer the phone instead of using automated answering services, and Seacology respects donor privacy and is compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
In 2014, Seacology reported \$2,309,541 in donations and grants and a total of \$2,335,266 when other revenue was included. Its expenses that year totaled \$1,656,772 with \$286,981 going toward fundraising and \$130,329 supporting management and other general expenses. Financial support comes mostly from individuals, foundations, and companies such as Nu Skin Enterprises, whose Force for Good Foundation contributes royalties based on sales of plant-based cosmetic formulas Cox developed for Epoch person care products. Board members also contribute a sizable portion of the annual budget, donating a minimum of \$10,000 per year to the organization.
## Leadership
Seacology is governed by its board of directors, which consists of corporate leaders who share a commitment to island conservation and the preservation of island cultures. Paul Alan Cox is the Chairman of Seacology. He received his PhD from Harvard University, and served as a professor at Brigham Young University, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala University, and is current adjunct Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Chicago, and adjunct Professor of Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno. Cox served as the Director of the National Tropical Botanical Garden (NTBG) for seven years, and as of 2011, he is the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethnomedicine. His research interests include island plant ecology and ethnobotany of island cultures, and he has published more than 225 scientific papers and reviews. For his research on new medicinal plants, he was named one of eleven "Heroes of Medicine" by 'Time' magazine. Cox is an advocate of indigenous peoples, and can speak a variety of island languages.
The Executive Director of Seacology is Duane Silverstein, who for 18 years prior to joining the organization acted as the Executive Director of the Goldman Fund and headed the Goldman Environmental Prize. He has written articles that have appeared in Asian Geographic as well as various scuba diving magazines, and he is a National Fellow of The Explorers Club. Silverstein has met with heads of state around the world, including several presidents of the United States, as well as several Secretaries-General of the United Nations. In addition to having his work covered in newspapers and periodicals, including Time magazine, the Bangkok Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle, he was also selected as an "All-Stars Among Us" in People magazine, for which he was honored at the 2009 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. In 2008, Silverstein and Seacology were briefly featured alongside several organizations in the music video for "What About Now" by the American rock band Daughtry. In 2010, Silverstein was awarded the one of the Jefferson Awards for Public Service and also was given the 2010 Coastal Hero Award by Sunset magazine.
The vice chair of Seacology is Ken Murdock, who also founded the herbal company Nature's Way after his mother was cured of a serious illness with an herbal medicine. Murdock played a key role in the creation of Seacology, and Nature's Way covered Seacology's administrative costs for three years. Murdock has volunteered in Samoa, during which time he resided on Manu'a and learned the local language.
The Scientific Advisory Board of Seacology includes island biodiversity specialists, whose research focuses on the conservation of oceanic and terrestrial island ecosystems. The Scientific Advisory Board generates recommendations for new conservation projects based on the latest research available. Among the members are researcher and Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond, entomologist oceanographer Sylvia Earle, and prior to his death, evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson. As the founder of Seacology, Cox is also a member of the advisory board.
Job-search website Talentdesk ranked Seacology the fourth-best American nonprofit organization to work for in 2018.
|
2,340,343 |
Makemake
| 1,162,510,526 |
Dwarf planet in the Outer Solar System
|
[
"Astronomical objects discovered in 2005",
"Classical Kuiper belt objects",
"Discoveries by Chad Trujillo",
"Discoveries by David L. Rabinowitz",
"Discoveries by Michael E. Brown",
"Dwarf planets",
"Makemake",
"Named minor planets",
"Objects observed by stellar occultation"
] |
Makemake (minor-planet designation 136472 Makemake) is a dwarf planet and the second-largest of what are known as the classical population of Kuiper belt objects, with a diameter approximately that of Saturn's moon Iapetus, or 60% that of Pluto. It has one known satellite. Its extremely low average temperature, about 40 K (−230 °C), means its surface is covered with methane, ethane, and possibly nitrogen ices.
Makemake was discovered on March 31, 2005 by a team led by Michael E. Brown, and announced on July 29, 2005. It was initially known as '''' and later given the minor-planet number 136472. In July 2008, it was named after Makemake, a creator god in the Rapa Nui mythology of Easter Island, under the expectation by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) that it would prove to be a dwarf planet.
## History
### Discovery
Makemake was discovered on March 31, 2005, by a team at the Palomar Observatory, led by Michael E. Brown, and was announced to the public on July 29, 2005. The team had planned to delay announcing their discoveries of the bright objects Makemake and until further observations and calculations were complete, but announced them both on July 29 when the discovery of another large object they had been tracking, , was controversially announced on July 27 by a different team in Spain.
The earliest known precovery observations of Makemake have been found in photographic plates of the Palomar Observatory's Digitized Sky Survey from January 29, 1955 to May 1, 1998.
Despite its relative brightness (a fifth as bright as Pluto), Makemake was not discovered until after many much fainter Kuiper belt objects. Most searches for minor planets are conducted relatively close to the ecliptic (the region of the sky that the Sun, Moon and planets appear to lie in, as seen from Earth), due to the greater likelihood of finding objects there. It probably escaped detection during the earlier surveys due to its relatively high orbital inclination, and the fact that it was at its farthest distance from the ecliptic at the time of its discovery, in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices.
Makemake is the brightest trans-Neptunian object after Pluto, with an apparent magnitude of 16.2 in late 1930, it is theoretically bright enough to have been discovered by Clyde Tombaugh, whose search for trans-Neptunian objects was sensitive to objects up to magnitude 17. Indeed, in 1934 Tombaugh reported that there were no other planets out to a magnitude of 16.5 and an inclination of 17 degrees, or of greater inclination but within 50 degrees of either node. And Makemake was there: At the time of Tombaugh's survey (1930–1943), Makemake varied from 5.5 to 13.2 degrees from the ecliptic, moving across Auriga, starting near the northwest corner of Taurus and cutting across a corner of Gemini. The starting position, however, was very close to the galactic anticenter, and Makemake would have been almost impossible to find against the dense background of stars. Tombaugh continued searching for thirteen years after his discovery of Pluto (and Makemake, though growing dimmer, was still magnitude 16.6 in early 1943, the last year of his search), but by then he was searching higher latitudes and did not find any more objects orbiting beyond Neptune.
### Name and symbol
The provisional designation was given to Makemake when the discovery was made public. Before that, the discovery team used the codename "Easterbunny" for the object, because of its discovery shortly after Easter.
In July 2008, in accordance with IAU rules for classical Kuiper belt objects, was given the name of a creator deity. The name of Makemake, the creator of humanity and god of fertility in the myths of the Rapa Nui, the native people of Easter Island, was chosen in part to preserve the object's connection with Easter.
Planetary symbols are no longer much used in astronomy. A Makemake symbol is included in Unicode as U+1F77C: it is mostly used by astrologers, but has also been used by NASA. The symbol was designed by Denis Moskowitz and John T. Whelan; it is a traditional petroglyph of Makemake's face stylized to resemble an 'M'. The commercial Solar Fire astrology software uses an alternative symbol (), a crossed variant of a symbol () created by astrologer Henry Seltzer for his commercial software.
## Orbit and classification
As of April 2019, Makemake was 52.5 AU (7.85 billion km) from the Sun, almost as far from the Sun as it ever reaches on its orbit. Makemake follows an orbit very similar to that of : highly inclined at 29° and a moderate eccentricity of about 0.16. But still, Makemake's orbit is slightly farther from the Sun in terms of both the semi-major axis and perihelion. Its orbital period is 306 years, more than Pluto's 248 years and Haumea's 283 years. Both Makemake and Haumea are currently far from the ecliptic (at an angular distance of almost 29°). Makemake will reach its aphelion in 2033, whereas Haumea passed its aphelion in early 1992.
Makemake is a classical Kuiper belt object (KBO), which means its orbit lies far enough from Neptune to remain stable over the age of the Solar System. Unlike plutinos, which can cross Neptune's orbit due to their 2:3 resonance with the planet, the classical objects have perihelia further from the Sun, free from Neptune's perturbation. Such objects have relatively low eccentricities (e below 0.2) and orbit the Sun in much the same way the planets do. Makemake, however, is a member of the "dynamically hot" class of classical KBOs, meaning that it has a high inclination compared to others in its population. Makemake is, probably coincidentally, near the 13:7 resonance with Neptune.
## Physical characteristics
### Brightness, size, and rotation
Makemake is currently visually the second-brightest Kuiper belt object after Pluto, having a March opposition apparent magnitude of 17.0 it will pass from its present constellation Coma Berenices to Boötes in December 2027. It is bright enough to be visible using a high-end amateur telescope.
Combining the detection in infrared by the Spitzer Space Telescope and Herschel Space Telescope with the similarities of spectrum with Pluto yielded an estimated diameter from 1,360 to 1,480 km. From the 2011 stellar occultation by Makemake, its dimensions had initially been measured at (1,502 ± 45) × (1,430 ± 9) km. However, the occultation data was later reanalyzed, leading to an estimate of (1434+48
−18) × (1420+18
−24 km) without a pole-orientation constraint. Makemake was the fourth dwarf planet recognized, because it has a bright V-band absolute magnitude of 0.05. Makemake has a highly reflective surface with a geometrical albedo of 0.82±0.02.
The rotation period of Makemake is estimated at 22.83 hours. A rotation period of 7.77 hours published in 2009 later turned out to be an alias of the actual rotation period. The possibility of this had been mentioned in the 2009 study, and the data from that study agrees well with the 22.83-hour period. This rotation period is relatively long for a dwarf planet. Part of this may be due to tidal acceleration from Makemake's satellite. It has been suggested that a second large, undiscovered satellite might better explain the dwarf planet's unusually long rotation.
Makemake's lightcurve amplitude is small, only 0.03 mag. This was thought to be due to Makemake currently being viewed pole on from Earth; however, S/2015 (136472) 1's orbital plane (which is probably orbiting with little inclination relative to Makemake's equator due to tidal effects) is edge-on from Earth, implying that Makemake is really being viewed equator-on.
### Spectra and surface
Like Pluto, Makemake appears red in the visible spectrum, and significantly redder than the surface of Eris (see colour comparison of TNOs). The near-infrared spectrum is marked by the presence of the broad methane (CH<sub>4</sub>) absorption bands. Methane is observed also on Pluto and Eris, but its spectral signature is much weaker.
Spectral analysis of Makemake's surface revealed that methane must be present in the form of large grains at least one centimetre in size. In addition to methane, large amounts of ethane and tholins as well as smaller amounts of ethylene, acetylene and high-mass alkanes (like propane) may be present, most likely created by photolysis of methane by solar radiation. The tholins are probably responsible for the red color of the visible spectrum. Although evidence exists for the presence of nitrogen ice on its surface, at least mixed with other ices, there is nowhere near the same level of nitrogen as on Pluto and Triton, where it composes more than 98 percent of the crust. The relative lack of nitrogen ice suggests that its supply of nitrogen has somehow been depleted over the age of the Solar System.
The far-infrared (24–70 μm) and submillimeter (70–500 μm) photometry performed by Spitzer and Herschel telescopes revealed that the surface of Makemake is not homogeneous. Although the majority of it is covered by nitrogen and methane ices, where the albedo ranges from 78 to 90%, there are small patches of dark terrain whose albedo is only 2 to 12%, and that make up 3 to 7% of the surface. These studies were made before S/2015 (136472) 1 was discovered; thus, these small dark patches may actually have been the dark surface of the satellite rather than any actual surface features on Makemake.
However, some experiments have refuted these studies. Spectroscopic studies, collected from 2005 to 2008 using the William Herschel Telescope (La Palma, Spain) were analyzed together with other spectra in the literature, as of 2014. They show some degree of variation in the spectral slope, which would be associated with different abundance of the complex organic materials, byproduct of the irradiation of the ices present on the surface of Makemake. However, the relative ratio of the two dominant icy species, methane and nitrogen, remains quite stable on the surface revealing a low degree of inhomogeneity in the ice component. These results have been recently confirmed when the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo acquired new visible and near infra-red spectra for Makemake, between 2006 and 2013, that covered nearly 80% of its surface; this study found that the variation in the spectra were negligible, suggesting that Makemake's surface may indeed be homogenous. Based on optical observations conducted between 2006 and 2017, Hromakina et al. concluded that Makemake's lightcurve was likely due to heterogeneities across its surface, but that the variations (of the order of 3%) were too small to have been detected spectroscopically.
### Atmosphere
Makemake was expected to have an atmosphere similar to that of Pluto but with a lower surface pressure. However, on 23 April 2011 Makemake passed in front of an 18th-magnitude star and abruptly blocked its light. The results showed that Makemake presently lacks a substantial atmosphere and placed an upper limit of 4–12 nanobar on the pressure at its surface.
The presence of methane and possibly nitrogen suggests that Makemake could have a transient atmosphere similar to that of Pluto near its perihelion. Nitrogen, if present, will be the dominant component of it. The existence of an atmosphere also provides a natural explanation for the nitrogen depletion: because the gravity of Makemake is weaker than that of Pluto, Eris and Triton, a large amount of nitrogen was probably lost via atmospheric escape; methane is lighter than nitrogen, but has significantly lower vapor pressure at temperatures prevalent at the surface of Makemake (32–36 K), which hinders its escape; the result of this process is a higher relative abundance of methane. However, studies of Pluto's atmosphere by New Horizons suggest that methane, not nitrogen, is the dominant escaping gas, suggesting that the reasons for Makemake's absence of nitrogen may be more complicated.
## Satellite
Makemake has a single discovered moon, S/2015 (136472) 1 and nicknamed MK2. It was seen 21,000 km (13,000 mi) from the dwarf planet, and its diameter is estimated at 175 km (110 mi) (for an assumed albedo of 4%).
## Exploration
Makemake was observed from afar by the New Horizons'' spacecraft in October 2007 and January 2017, from distances of 52 AU and 70 AU, respectively. The spacecraft's outbound trajectory permitted observations of Makemake at high phase angles that are otherwise unobtainable from Earth, enabling the determination of the light scattering properties and phase curve behavior of Makemake's surface.
It has been calculated that a flyby mission to Makemake could take just over 16 years using a Jupiter gravity assist, based on a launch date of 21 August 2024 or 24 August 2036. Makemake would be approximately 52 AU from the Sun when the spacecraft arrives.
## See also
- Astronomical naming conventions
- Clearing the neighbourhood
- International Astronomical Union
- Planets beyond Neptune
- List of Solar System objects most distant from the Sun
|
52,604,465 |
Kalākaua's 1881 world tour
| 1,169,729,387 |
Tour by King Kalākaua of the Hawaiian Kingdom
|
[
"1881 in Hawaii",
"1881 in international relations",
"Diplomatic visits by heads of state",
"Foreign relations of the Hawaiian Kingdom",
"History of immigration to Hawaii",
"House of Kalākaua",
"Political history of Hawaii",
"Royal visits"
] |
The 1881 world tour of King Kalākaua of the Hawaiian Kingdom was his attempt to save the Hawaiian culture and population from extinction by importing a labor force from Asia-Pacific nations. His efforts brought the small island nation to the attention of world leaders, but sparked rumors that the kingdom was for sale. Critics in Hawaii believed the labor negotiations were just an excuse to see the world. The 281-day trip gave Kalākaua the distinction of being the first monarch to circumnavigate the globe; his 1874 travels had made him the first reigning monarch to visit the United States and the first honoree of a state dinner at the White House.
## Tour summary
Kalākaua met with heads of state in Asia, the Mideast and Europe, to encourage an influx of sugar plantation labor in family groups, as well as unmarried women as potential brides for Hawaii's existing contract laborers. While in Asia, he tried to forestall American ambitions by offering a plan to Emperor Meiji for putting Hawaii under the protection of the Empire of Japan with an arranged marriage between his niece Kaʻiulani and a Japanese prince. On his visit to Portugal, he negotiated a treaty of friendship and commerce with Hawaii that would provide a legal framework for the emigration of Portuguese laborers to Hawaii. The king had an audience in Rome with Pope Leo XIII and met with many of the crowned heads of Europe. Britain's Queen Victoria and the splendor of her royal life impressed him more than any other monarchy; having been greatly affected by the ornate trappings of European sovereigns, he would soon have Hawaii's monarchy mirror that grandeur.
The king traveled with no security guards; only a small group of personal friends made the journey with him. Except for land transportation in cities, and two loaned ships in China and the US, his modes of transportation were seldom reserved exclusively for him. He shared regularly scheduled steamships and rail transport with fare-paying passengers. On the Red Sea, he played cards and danced with other passengers. Like other tourists, he visited the white elephants of Siam, the Giza pyramid complex in Egypt, tourist sites in India, and museums in Europe. Along the way, he exceeded his original budget, shopping regardless, and sent letters back home.
President James A. Garfield died four days before they arrived back in the United States, and Kalākaua paid a courtesy call to newly inaugurated President Chester A. Arthur at the White House in Washington, D.C. There were no public or private appearances for the king in New York, only a day at Coney Island. Before leaving the eastern US, the king met with Thomas Edison to see a demonstration of electric lights, and visited Virginia's Fort Monroe. He toured Hampton Normal and Agricultural School, and shopped for horses in Kentucky. The royal party boarded a train to California, where they were house guests of Claus Spreckels at his estate in Aptos (near Santa Cruz), and spent a few days seeing the sights before sailing back to Hawaii. Kalākaua was successful in jump-starting new immigration, the first transplants arriving in Hawaii less than a year later. In the years that followed, he began emulating the lifestyles of European royalty with expensive furnishings in Iolani Palace, a public coronation for himself, and a two-week public celebration of his birthday.
## Background
No other sovereign ruler had ever accomplished the feat of circling the globe, but Kalākaua, the last king of the Hawaiian Islands, had previously set other records. He was the first reigning monarch to visit the United States during his 1874 visit to Washington, D.C., for negotiations on the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875. The state dinner in his honor hosted by President Ulysses S. Grant was the first White House state dinner ever given. According to the personal writings of Queen Dowager Emma, a political opponent of his, Kalākaua supposedly had the intention in 1874 of making a world tour "for his personal gratification and vanity".
The islands were officially the Hawaiian Kingdom but had generally been known as the Sandwich Islands since the 1778 visit of Captain James Cook. The estimated population of Native Hawaiians when Cook arrived was 800,000. With the arrival of whaling ships and missionaries in the early 19th century, the Native Hawaiians were exposed to diseases for which they had no immunity and began dying in large numbers. The official 1878 census showed only 44,088 individuals who claimed Hawaiian ethnicity. The sugar plantation work force in the islands and the dwindling population of the Hawaiian race had been Kalākaua's ongoing concerns. On December 24, 1880, he signed an act of the legislative assembly acknowledging corruption in the immigration system and authorizing Minister of the Interior Henry A. P. Carter to take charge of licensing immigration brokers.
Immediately following the signing of the legislation, he visited each major island in the kingdom for a personal look at how the reciprocity treaty had affected his people. In a speech before an audience of Native Hawaiians at a Congregational church on Kauai, Kalākaua related his concerns, "I will speak to you of one of our great questions, which is the supply of people, not only to meet the requirements of all our industries but to assist in the increase of a Hawaiian population." He wanted to bring in immigrants from Asia-Pacific nations, as well as Europe and the United States, to save the declining population of the Hawaiian race from completely dying out. Prior labor immigration had been mostly unmarried men, and he hoped to attract unmarried women as potential wives for them, as well as bringing in family groups.
Kalākaua appointed William Nevins Armstrong as Attorney General in December. Armstrong had been born to Presbyterian missionaries Clarissa and Richard Armstrong in Lahaina. He had known Kalākaua since their early days at the Chiefs Children's School on Maui where he and classmate Charles Hastings Judd became friends with the future king. He graduated from Yale University and became a successful lawyer before returning to Hawaii. Judd had been on Kalākaua's staff since he was elected king, soon after becoming part of his Privy Council, as well as being his chamberlain and private secretary.
Years later Armstrong remembered the invitation to join the tour as having arisen in a casual conversation, during which he did not believe the king was serious. He realized the proposed tour was not just idle conversation when the king informed his Cabinet of his plans and chose Armstrong, Judd, and his personal cook Robert von Oelhoffen as his only traveling companions. At a state dinner held by Kalākaua and his ministers a week before departure, Armstrong spoke of their youthful dreams of sailing around the world finally being brought to fruition.
Minister of the Interior Carter issued a Bureau of Immigration Ordinance on January 14, 1881, stipulating the terms and conditions under which new immigrants would be allowed into the islands. On January 17, Kalākaua appointed Armstrong as Royal Commissioner of Immigration; Carter became acting Attorney General until their return. Armstrong had instructions to return with a feasibility study indicating which nations were likely to provide "a desirable population" for the Hawaiian labor force. William L. Green, Minister of Foreign Affairs, followed up with a communique to Hawaii's consulates stating the goals for the tour.
Kalākaua's sister and heir-apparent Liliʻuokalani was to act as Regent during his absence. She devoted a chapter of her 1898 book Hawaii's Story to her brother's tour. Her assertion was that the "missionary party" tried to exert its control by insisting that she only be allowed to be in charge of a temporary council and that all decisions in the king's absence were to be made by the entire council. She balked at the suggestion and demanded that her regency have full royal power; he agreed.
Farewell receptions were held for the king by the Catholic and Protestant communities in Honolulu on the eve of his departure. John Mākini Kapena, a member of the House of Nobles, spoke to the assembled well-wishers gathered at Kawaiahaʻo Church, stating "...The great nations now look with respect on this little Kingdom and will have still more, when they see our king traveling among them for information to benefit his people, Let us all pray every day for the king's health, and safe return to his people." Throughout the night, his subjects serenaded him with traditional oli (chants) and mele (songs) outside the palace.
Kalākaua's Masonic ties as Master of Lodge Le Progres de L'Oceanie would give him a global brotherhood in his travels. He and his chosen companions boarded the steamship City of Sydney at 6:30 a.m., January 20, bound for San Francisco. As the king made his way onto the ship, many in the crowd at the dock reached out to touch him. Major George W. Macfarlane, his aide-de-camp, would accompany them as far as California. The king traveled as Aliʻi Kalākaua and as Prince Kalākaua, rather than in his capacity as head of state. The intent was to give the impression of a personal vacation, thereby avoiding the large costly retinue required for official business. The Royal Hawaiian Band, the Hawaiian army, and a large contingent of well-wishers bid them farewell as the City of Sydney sailed out.
## California, January 29 – February 8
The City of Sydney arrived at San Francisco during a rain storm a week later, and Kalākaua's party ensconced themselves in the Palace Hotel. Spectators amassed at the train station for their arrival in Sacramento that week, during which the royal group visited the California State Legislature. They were accompanied in California's capital by Governor George Clement Perkins, sugar baron Claus Spreckels, and water engineer Hermann Schussler, who had worked on several projects in Hawaii.
During the week, the king and Judd were made honorary members of the Pacific Yacht Club in Sausalito at a reception hosted by Commodore R. S. Floyd. Kalākaua was also feted at a gala in San Francisco's Chinatown, given by the Chinese Consul-General and attended by leaders of the local Chinese community. It was Armstrong who delivered the after-dinner speech and offered a toast to continued good relations with the Chinese population in Hawaii.
In response to Kalākaua's expressed fondness for music and the company of women, "The Ladies of the Palace Hotel" threw a formal-attire grand ball in his honor. A news commentary on the California visit stated, "... it may be said that every hour of King Kalākaua's stay in San Francisco has been filled up with a grand ovation of activities."
## Asia: March 4 – June 7
### Japan: March 4–18
The party sailed on RMS Oceanic out of San Francisco on February 8. Reaching the Empire of Japan on March 4, they were surprised by elaborate welcoming ceremonies that included the playing of the anthem Kalākaua had written, "Hawaiʻi Ponoʻī". They had not given advance notice to the Japanese government of their pending visit, but the government had been alerted by a telegraph from the Imperial General Consul in San Francisco. Believing a formal reception was required by their 1871 treaty with the Hawaiian Kingdom, they welcomed the king as a friendly head of state. In deference, Kalākaua acquiesced to his being treated as if he were on an official state visit.
The king and his small group spent just under three weeks on their tour of Japan. They were formally welcomed at the Tokyo Imperial Palace and taken to Shintomiza, the Imperial Theatre, to be entertained by a kabuki drama. The following day Emperor Meiji held a state dinner for his visitors. The Emperor presented the king with two suits of Japanese armor, and bestowed upon him the Order of the Chrysanthemum with Badge, and the Star of the Order. The king reciprocated with a royal painting of Queen Kapiolani and himself, and presented the Emperor with the Grand Cross of Kamehameha. In the same ceremony, Judd and Armstrong were given the Order of the Rising Sun. By way of understanding local education and industries, the king toured the College of the Imperial Guard, Imperial Engineering College, and the Oji Paper Company. Two of Japan's generals gave him a guided tour through the empire's arsenal.
Concern over a possible United States seizure of the Hawaiian Islands motivated Kalākaua to hold a secret meeting with the Emperor to bring Hawaii under the protective aegis of the Japanese empire. He proposed to unite the two nations with an arranged marriage between his 5-year-old niece Princess Kaʻiulani and 13-year-old Prince Yamashina Sadamaro.. Historian Ralph Kuykendall said the proposal was rejected both by Sadamaro, upon advice of his father, and by the government of Japan. The Hawaiian king also recommended that Emperor Meiji create a "Union and Federation of the Asiatic nations and sovereigns" with Japan as its head, although the Emperor politely declined this idea at a later date.
Japanese newspapers cautioned about looking for an emigrating labor force in Japan, stating that their own country had large areas of available agricultural land that went untouched. A ball was planned in the king's honor by the Masonic Fraternity of Yokohama, which he bowed out of when he learned of the assassination of Alexander II of Russia. The Kalākaua group arrived in Kobe on March 18 for a sightseeing tour and lunch with the mayor. On March 22, they embarked on the steamship Tokio Maru bound for Shanghai.
> Adieu Japan – Beautiful Japan. I felt as if I would have a continual longing to see this interesting country with its kind and hospitable inhabitants for a long long time. Aloha Nui
### China: March 25 – April 9
The Chinese had been a part of Hawaii's culture since the late 18th century, when the islands were first visited by Chinese merchants and tradesmen. In 1852, sugar plantations began recruiting unskilled labor from China. Because these men initially intended to return to China upon the completion of their contracts, most came without families.
Upon arriving in Shanghai on March 25, Kalākaua spent two days in residence at the Astor House Hotel, receiving foreign diplomats. They departed for Tientsin on March 27 when Viceroy Li Hung Chang offered the steamship Pautah for their use.
Kalākaua met with the Viceroy on March 31 to propose the emigration of unmarried Chinese women, as well as Chinese family units to Hawaii, to counterbalance the labor population of unmarried Chinese men. The Viceroy responded favorably and agreed to co-sponsor such an emigration with the Hawaiian government. Li arranged several events to provide Kalākaua the opportunity to meet the city's influential persons. A copy of a draft of a proposed treaty was forwarded to Hawaii's Minister of Foreign Affairs Green. The Hong Kong Daily News held a positive view of Hawaii's treatment of existing Chinese laborers, but stated that the Chinese government needed to provide financial assistance for family emigration to Hawaii. The royal party returned to Shanghai on April 6. A proposed trip to Beijing was aborted when Empress Dowager Ci'an died on April 8. They sailed out of China the next day.
### Hong Kong: April 12–21
The traveling group departed on the steamship Thibet for British Hong Kong, arriving April 12. Kalākaua was the guest of Hong Kong's governor John Pope Hennessy at Government House, where the king was honored with a diplomatic reception and banquet. Armstrong delivered the after-dinner speech.
Kalākaua was given celebratory receptions at the Victoria Lodge of Freemasons No. 1026 and Perseverance Lodge No. 1165, both in Hong Kong. Judd was voted into the masonry brotherhood at the latter, Lodge No. 1165.
They left Hong Kong on the steamship Killarney on April 21.
### Siam (Thailand): April 26–30
The steamship Killarney arrived in Bangkok on April 26. How they would be received was speculative, since Hawaii had no treaty with Siam. Upon arrival, they were carried aboard a royal yacht up the Chao Phraya River to Bangkok. From there, they were carried on silk chairs to one of the many palaces in Bangkok for the duration of their visit. The following day they met with King Chulalongkorn who told Kalākaua that the Siamese and Native Hawaiians were related by the common Malayan bloodline. A member of the Siamese royal family escorted Kalākaua to see the nation's famed white elephants.
Chulalongkorn hosted a state dinner and made Kalākaua a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Crown of Siam; Kalākaua reciprocated with the Royal Order of Kamehameha I. Armstrong and Judd were given the Knight Grand Cross of the Crown of Siam, Third Class. No labor negotiations took place, although Kalākaua later mentioned in his letter to his brother-in-law Oahu Governor John Owen Dominis that "an exchange of decorations" with leaders in Asian nations potentially opened doors for future talks on immigration. He included a lengthy list of decorations to be sent to various members of the Siamese nobility.
Kalākaua's party embarked on the steamship Bangkok for Singapore on May 1. As the ship sailed away, they were bid farewell by a military gun salute, and shouts of approval by well-wishers at the dock.
### Peninsular Malaya (Singapore and Malaysia) Burma (Myanmar): May 6–24
By the time the Bangkok docked in Singapore on May 6, Kalākaua had had enough of formal events, turning down the offer of accommodations at Government House in favor of the simplicity of a hotel. Nevertheless, Governor Frederick Weld held a formal reception and state dinner for him.
When he visited Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor on May 10 at the Palace of Istana Besar, 12 miles from Singapore, he was greeted as a brother. They squared off in the Sultan's palace over a billiard table. Armstrong was advised by Abu Bakar that while the inhabitants of Singapore and the Malay peninsula were good at varied professions, agricultural labor was not one of them. Abu Bakar told Armstrong that the Malay states were importing plantation labor from China and India.
Kalākaua and Judd visited the Lodge Zetland in the East, No. 548, in Singapore on May 11, where Judd was bestowed with the third degree in masonry. The king had hoped to buy pearls for his wife Queen Kapiolani in Singapore, but found the prices prohibitive. On May 12, the royal entourage departed on the steamship Mecca.
Malacca was a six-hour layover on May 13, affording limited sightseeing. Kalākaua was given walking canes as souvenirs. Their one day at Penang on May 15 saw a visit by Governor John Frederick Adolphus McNair who hosted them at his residence of Suffolk House.
A change of transportation at Moulmein put them on the steamship Pembo (or Pamba), arriving in Rangoon on May 22. During their stopover, they were entertained at Government House by the English Commissioner, and Kalākaua attended worship services at the chapel of St. John's College. They departed on May 24.
### India: May 28 – June 7
Several plantation owners in Hawaii favored the importation of coolie labor from the East India region. Henry A. P. Carter and British consul James Hay Wodehouse had already visited England in 1879 to open a door for the process. They were discouraged by stipulations that Hawaii would be forced to pass legislation that would in essence be a detailed labor contract. There was a further requirement that such a Hawaiian law could not be changed without the approval of the governments of both Great Britain and East India. The prospect was explored through the end of 1880, when Hawaii's immigration board decided the islands could not import Indian labor within the parameters required.
According to a report of the trip Armstrong later filed with the Hawaiian government, any negotiations for Indian contract labor had to be done with the British government in London, so no talks were conducted during their time in India. They arrived in Calcutta on May 28 and visited the Alipore Zoological Gardens. Kalākaua spent one day sitting in the Calcutta courthouse to observe India's legal process. Their trip across the British India subcontinent was a sightseeing excursion during their last days before sailing to the Middle East, and they stopped to tour the Ellora Caves prior to reaching Bombay. The king soon tired of the long journey, and was bored and restless by the time they arrived at Bombay, where they remained until the departure of their steamship on June 7. There was more in Bombay to interest him: a shopping trip, the Arab Stallion Stables, the Parsi Towers of Silence, and a visit from businessman Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy.
## Egypt: June 20–25
The steamship Rosetta sailed out of Bombay on June 7, carrying Kalākaua and his friends to Aden for an afternoon of shopping on June 14, and then onto the Red Sea. In a letter to Liliʻuokalani, Kalākaua described how his romantic boyhood dreams of sailing the Red Sea were dashed by the tedium of a week on the water with no land in sight. All was not lost, since he and the estimated 70 other passengers passed the week playing games and dancing.
Arriving at the Suez on June 20, they boarded a train for Cairo. With no existing treaty with Egypt, they were pleasantly surprised by Khedive Tewfik Pasha's offer of his Cairo palace during their stay, accommodating them with a tour of the Pyramid complex and the Great Sphinx on the Giza Plateau.
Writing to his sister Liliʻuokalani from Cairo, he responded to her letter apprising him of the smallpox epidemic in the islands: "... what is the use of praying after 293 lives of our poor people have gone to their everlasting place. Is it to thank him for killing or is it to thank him for sending them to him or to the other place ... To save the life of the people is to work and not pray."
The Egyptian Gazette published Kalākaua's acceptance speech when the Grand Lodge of Egypt freemasons made him Honorary Grand Master of the Great Orient of Egypt. He was honored with a state ball in Alexandria by the Khedive on June 24, the day before they left on the steamer Asia.
## Europe: June 29 – September 13
Throughout their European stops, Armstrong saw a willingness among some who were looking for a life change to consider emigrating to Hawaii as plantation labor. Generally, however, they were looking for a stake in land ownership that the kingdom was not willing to offer.
### Italy: June 29 – July 4
Armstrong mentioned a brief stop at Catania, on the island of Sicily, probably on June 29, visiting the Catania Cathedral and Mount Etna. Their next stop was at Naples on June 30, where they were greeted by the Prefect of Naples, the Commanding General and Admiral of Naples, and Celso Caesar Moreno, presenting himself to local officials as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hawaii. Moreno was a friend of Kalākaua's who many felt was a con artist. Armstrong described him as someone who scammed his way into Kalākaua's good graces in Hawaii. Moreno had been appointed Hawaii's Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1880. He created a divisive situation that put the king at odds with his own cabinet, leading to Moreno's dismissal five days later. He and Kalākaua remained on cordial terms. Moreno had been appointed the guardian of three Hawaiian students, including the future rebel leaders Robert Napuʻuako Boyd and Robert William Wilcox, who were being educated in Italy as a part of the government funded study-abroad program. Moreno was relieved of that responsibility once the king was made aware that Moreno had misrepresented them as Kalākaua's natural sons, and that he had misled the Italian government into believing he had an official position with the Hawaiian government. The Saturday Press in Honolulu was indignant at his association with Kalākaua and their re-connection in Italy, stating that Moreno "... had fought to the last ditch, and has, we hope, tumbled into it and will remain there."
The royal group spent two hours at Naples National Archaeological Museum before having an audience with king Umberto I and Queen Margherita. They spent the next day seeing more attractions in Naples, before heading for Rome on the afternoon train. Prior to their departure, they had learned of the July 2 shooting of President James A. Garfield in Washington, D.C.
Their time in Rome was a brief two days, during which Kalākaua, Armstrong, and Judd were granted an audience with Pope Leo XIII on July 3. After receiving his blessing, they toured St. Peter's Basilica and other local tourist sites, and left the following day by train. The party traveled across France and Paris without informing the French authorities, which was seen as a breach of official protocol and had to be explained at a later date.
### England: July 6–24
The Kalākaua group arrived in London the evening of July 6. The king spent the next day receiving visitors in his suite at Claridge's, later accepting Queen Victoria's offer of the royal box at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. While in England, he attended an Eton v Harrow cricket match, and returned to the Royal Opera House to hear opera singer Adelina Patti. The Queen's annual Windsor Great Park review of 50,000 military volunteers drew many high-ranking and titled spectators, including Kalākaua. Following the review, he was entertained by Civil Lord of the Admiralty Thomas Brassey and his wife at their encampment. He attended worship services at Westminster Abbey on Sunday, prior to his afternoon sailing trip with Lord Charles Beresford and guests.
Kalākaua, Armstrong and Judd were formally presented to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. Kalākaua's letter to his sister Liliʻuokalani expressed his excitement about meeting the Queen, "... I was quite electrified and monopolized the whole conversation that took place during the interview." His letter was effusive in details about the titled royals and aristocrats they had met, including the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Prussia. The Prince of Wales paid many attentions to Kalākaua, hoping to sway him away from the United States. As kings are more highly ranked than most other titled individuals, he insisted on giving Kalākaua precedence ahead of his brother-in-law, the Crown Prince of Germany and responded to German objections by saying, "Either the brute is a king or else he is an ordinary black nigger, and if he is not a king, why is he here?"
Hawaii's relationship with A. Hoffnung & Company in London dated back to 1877 when Hawaii's Minister of Foreign Affairs Henry A. P. Carter recommended the firm to handle Portuguese emigration to the island kingdom. The firm's founder Abraham Hoffnung was attached to the Hawaiian Board of Immigration in London, and had already succeeded in sending Hawaii 751 Portuguese citizens (237 men, 191 women, and 323 children) in 1879. Kalākaua reconnected with Hoffnung over dinner, and he became part of the royal party as it traveled through Europe.
On July 23, the day before departing for Brussels, Kalākaua had lunch with the Duke of Teck, and inspected ships at the Yarrow Shipbuilders.
### Belgium, Germany: July 25 – August 4
Kalākaua and Judd left England on July 24, arriving in Brussels the next morning. They spent a few days sightseeing, and visited Waterloo, where Napoleon Bonaparte had been defeated in 1815. Kalākaua presented Belgium's King Leopold II with the Order of Kamehameha when he paid a visit to him.
They arrived at Cologne on July 29, visiting the Cologne Cathedral before continuing on to Berlin. Kalākaua stayed in his Berlin accommodations and took care of his correspondence the first full day of his stay, with German soldiers standing vigil outside his door. He received boisterous expressions of public approval wherever he appeared. During their stay, they attended several military displays and toured museums, castles, and other sites of interest. The king was entertained by the future Kaiser Wilhelm II and his wife, who were receiving him on behalf of Wilhelm's grandfather, the German Emperor. On a visit to Potsdam with Prince Charles of Prussia, Kalākaua was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Red Eagle. Armstrong rejoined the group in Germany, but was too ill to accompany them on their outings. They departed for Vienna on August 4.
### Vienna, Austria: August 5–8
Onlookers gathered at Vienna's Northwest station in anticipation of Kalākaua's arrival. When he stepped off the train to be escorted by Austrian officials to the Hotel Imperial, cheering rang out from the crowd. He later visited the Imperial Arsenal. After a tour of the Belvedere, he attended a concert conducted by Eduard Strauss at the Volksgarten. In the evening he enjoyed a ballet at the Imperial Opera House.
The royal family had already left Vienna for the summer, but Kalākaua got to inspect the troops during military maneuvers at the Schmelz parade grounds. He later had an audience with Archduke Albrecht, Duke of Teschen. In the evening, he returned to the opera house for a performance of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. The next two days were spent sightseeing, including the Schönbrunn Palace, St. Stephen's Cathedral, the Votive Church, and the Neue Freie Presse.
On August 8, the king and his friends took the evening train to Paris.
### Paris: August 10–15
The Royal party arrived at the Gare de l'Est train station in Paris in the pre-dawn hours of August 10, rejoined by Macfarlane. Most of the first day they remained in their suite, recovering from travel exhaustion. They soon ventured out to see to the Auteuil Hippodrome, and stopped by various concert halls.
Armstrong noted that the party was received with "the cold shoulder" by diplomatic authorities for the first time on their trip, while the king in return considered them to be a "mean lot". They had to apologize for the diplomatic slight from the earlier July stopover, and explain the reason why an invitation for the king, received while they were still in London, to attend the Bastille Day celebration as a guest of President Grévy was left unanswered. After the tension was smoothed out, the French foreign minister visited the King in the absence of the president who was not in the capital at that time.
Otherwise, their stay in Paris was filled with well-wishers who came to call at the hotel. Queen Victoria sent her chargé d'affaires to present him with the Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George. After days of visitors, which included world dignitaries and representatives of two different Masonic lodges, Kalākaua and friends attended a performance of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida. He was given a tour of the headquarters of Le Figaro, and visited the Société de géographie. On August 15, the royal group, which now included Hoffnung, left on the evening train, bound for Portugal and Spain.
### Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain): August 19–25
Portuguese immigrants had been in Hawaii since the whaling days. Many of them were mixed blood Afro-Portuguese sailors who found the brown-skinned Native Hawaiians free of racial bias towards them. The first Portuguese plantation labor emigration to Hawaii came from the Azores and Madeira in 1878, starved out of their homelands by widespread grape vine fungus. They emigrated mostly in family groups, joining an established community of their own culture.
Armstrong's instructions for Portugal were to negotiate an expanded treaty with the government. They arrived at Santa Apolónia railway station in Lisbon on August 19. Kalākaua was presented with the Grand Cross Order of the Immaculate Conception of Vila Viçosa during an audience with King Luís I at the Palace of Ajuda, and also attended a bullfight with Luis's father King Ferdinand II at the Pena Palace. When they left Portugal on August 24, Armstrong remained behind to initiate a treaty.
The royal group toured Madrid on August 24, visiting the Royal Army, Museo del Prado, and Buen Retiro Park. The Spanish minister presented Kalākaua with the Collar of the Order of Charles III. An announcement was released to the newspapers that an arrangement had been made for Portugal to send 300 families to the Hawaiian Islands in the near future. They departed for Paris on August 25.
### Revisiting Paris: August 27–30
Winding down his tour, Kalākaua's schedule became less hectic. He spent most of August 27 relaxing in his hotel suite in Paris, and attending to his personal correspondence. A little sightseeing was done over the next two days: Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides, Bal Mabille, the Louvre, and Palais Bourbon. Dutch heir-apparent Alexander, Prince of Orange, visited the king to thank him for the Grand Cross of the Order of Kalākaua. The king spent his remaining day in the city, August 30, in his hotel suite, saying his farewells.
### Revisiting London: August 31 – September 6
The train carrying Kalākaua and his travel companions arrived in London at Charing Cross railway station the morning of August 31. In the evening they all attended a performance at Drury Lane Theatre. Armstrong left for New York City on September 1, as the rest of the party went sightseeing and visited the tomb of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington in St Paul's Cathedral. The following day they visited the Tower of London, and later in the day, Kalākaua received the Royal Order of Vasa from Sweden's chargé d'affaires. On September 3, the royal party visited the Blenheim Gun and Small Arms Works, where they lunched with several dignitaries. After services at St Paul's Cathedral, Kalākaua bestowed the Royal Order of Kalākaua on Hoffnung for his service during their travels around Europe. On September 6, he paid a farewell visit to the Prince and Princess of Wales, before departing for Glasgow, Scotland.
### Scotland: September 7–13
Kalākaua arrived in Glasgow on September 7. The Lord Provost of Glasgow and the magistrates hosted the king at a dinner party, where he gave a speech praising the contributions of Scotsmen in Hawaii. For the rest of his stay, he toured Loch Lomond and the River Clyde. Visiting Edinburgh on September 9, he toured Dreghorn Castle and the Royal Botanic Garden, where he planted two maple trees. Kalākaua appeared at Freemason Hall to loud cheers. The Grand Conclave of Scotland of the Order of the Red Cross of Constantine made him an honorary member.
Hawaii's royal tourists departed for America via Liverpool on September 13.
## Across the United States: September 23 – October 22
The steamship Celtic pulled into New York Harbor on September 23, carrying Kalākaua, Judd, Macfarlane, and von Oelhoffen. Awaiting them on the dock were Armstrong, Hawaiian consul general Elisha Hunt Allen, Jr. and Claus Spreckels. New York was in mourning over the September 19 death of President Garfield. Out of respect to the solemnity of the tragedy, Kalākaua attended no public or private functions in the city. The royal party did, however, spend a day as private tourists at Coney Island.
In Vienna during the first week in August, Kalākaua had made the acquaintance of The New York Times co-founder George Jones, who noticed the king had an interest in Thomas Edison's work with electric lighting. Returning to New York, Jones arranged for Kalākaua and Armstrong to visit Edison on September 25. The king expressed an urgent need for Honolulu to upgrade its street lighting, which at that time was provided by kerosene lamps. Edison demonstrated some electric light bulbs, and Kalākaua showed interest in the technical details. The Sun newspaper reported that Armstrong joked with Edison about generating electric power from Hawaiian volcanoes. They left the city by train on the following day for Philadelphia, staying there for a brief rest, and then heading south to Washington, D.C.
Arriving in Washington, D.C., on September 27, they stayed at the Arlington Hotel. On the following day, the party was introduced by the Assistant Secretary of State Robert R. Hitt to the newly inaugurated President Chester A. Arthur, at the home of Virginia Senator John W. Johnston. The informal private interview lasted only twenty minutes but was described as pleasant. Armstrong later described their similarities: "If the President had been a dark or black man, the [physical] resemblance would have been a singular one."
After the presidential visit, the royal party headed to Baltimore where Secretary of State William H. Hunt provided a governmental vessel, the USS Despatch, to transport them to Tidewater Virginia. The king toured Fortress Monroe where General George W. Getty received him before spending the day with Armstrong's brother Samuel at Hampton Normal and Agricultural School. The king was interested in the institution's role in educating Native Americans in the industrial trade, a model he wanted to bring back to his people, even though Samuel Armstrong had modeled his school after the Hilo Boarding School in Hawaii. After a visit to the Old Soldier's Home and a reception at Virginia Hall, the party returned north to Fortress Monroe, where they witnessed a review, and then proceeded to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. It was reported that the royal party also visited Yorktown to observe the centennial celebration of its siege.
Returning to the capital on October 2, they boarded a train, arriving the next day at Cincinnati, where they stayed at the Grand Hotel. While Armstrong remained in Cincinnati, Kalākaua, Judd, and Macfarlane took a trip to Lexington, Kentucky, visiting the city, meeting the local dignitaries, and spending a night with General William T. Withers at his home Fairlawn, outside the city. The following day they visited the Kentucky thoroughbred farm of Milton H. Sanford, where they purchased two stallions and five mares for shipment back to Honolulu, although contradictory reports in the Louisville press stated they did not purchase any horses. Afterward they returned to Cincinnati and boarded another train heading west.
At a scheduled layover in Chicago, they disembarked only long enough for breakfast and to answer some brief media questions before the train resumed its route. In Omaha, Nebraska, the king was the guest of honor at a reception held in the home of Judge James M. Woolworth. Most of the attendees were friends of the judge's daughter, who had met the king on a vacation in Hawaii. Although Kalākaua had claimed exhaustion from his world trip, he nevertheless danced the whole night with the women guests. Claus and Mrs. Spreckels joined the group at Ogden, Utah.
They arrived in California on October 11. Part of the King's stay was at the Spreckels summer home in Aptos, with a sightseeing trip to Lick Observatory. While he was a guest at the Spreckels home, the sugar baron gave the King two horses and a colt. California friends of the King joined him for a farewell dinner at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco on October 22, just prior to his sailing on the steamship Australia back to Honolulu. Among those attending were Spreckels, Governor Perkins, California state senator Paul Neumann, and University of California president Horace Davis.
## Honolulu homecoming: October 29 – November 6
The Australia was not expected to arrive in Hawaii until October 31. Plans for Kalākaua's homecoming celebration in Hawaii had begun in August, and included every organized civic and labor union group, as well as the student body of every school on Oahu. The general public was invited to participate in the festivities. Honolulu was in the final stages of preparation on October 29, when the Australia flying Kalākaua's royal flag sailed past Diamond Head, making its way to Honolulu Harbor. As the alert quickly spread across Oahu, a battery of guns began firing along the waterfront from Diamond Head to the port, and a frenzied scramble began to complete the decorations. After 281 days of constant travel, Hawaii's last king was home.
The homecoming celebration went on for days. Officials and the general population of the island crowded the shoreline to cheer their returning monarch. Speeches were made in both English and Hawaiian, and some people stood on rooftops for a glimpse. Floral arrangements permeated the city, welcome-home signs were displayed, and music was everywhere. Along his route to Iolani Palace, the procession passed beneath numerous festooned arches erected for his homecoming. A daytime parade was held in his honor. The palace was opened for the public to personally greet the King. The Honolulu Fire Department and the Poola Association began an evening torchlight parade at a bell tower brightly lit with Chinese lanterns, and proceeded through the streets of downtown Honolulu to the palace.
Sunday, November 6 was a day when houses of worship in Honolulu offered prayers and thanks for the divine protection and safe return of their monarch. The Catholic Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu conducted the Te Deum hymn of praise. Attended by Kalākaua and Kapiolani, the King's ministry, and much of the Hawaiian government, thanks were given for divine protection during the royal journey. Former missionary Rev. Sereno E. Bishop of the Fort Street Church praised the King's historic journey, but condemned the Hawaiian culture for its "decrepit paganism" and "bestialities of the hula hula". Kalākaua and Kapiolani attended the services at the Anglican Saint Andrew's Cathedral as private individuals, to hear a sermon on the Parable of the talents or minas based on the Gospel of Luke 19:13, "And he called his ten servants and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, 'Make use of it till I come.'"
## The rumor mill
While the King was in California on January 31, the Straits Times of Singapore published a story that Kalākaua already had a representative in Germany finalizing the sale of the kingdom. In April, Secretary of State James G. Blaine was made aware of various rumors that Kalākaua wanted to sell the kingdom to a nation other than the United States, and repeated them to Garfield, who in turn shared them in a letter to one of his friends. In an attempt to protect the interests of the United States, Blaine made it clear to British diplomat Edward Thornton that priority on annexation belonged to the United States. Thornton filed a report with his government, sending a copy to Honolulu's British consul Wodehouse who shared it with Queen Dowager Emma, Princess Likelike, her husband Archibald Scott Cleghorn, Liliʻuokalani, and her husband John Owen Dominis. Although troubled by the rumors and by Blaine's stance on annexation, none of them had any knowledge of the situation and so forwarded the report to Kalākaua.
When the king was visiting England on July 15, the Sacramento Daily Record-Union reprinted a defensive July 14 editorial in The New York Times stating the rumor as fact that Kalākaua was circumnavigating the world in hopes of finding a buyer for the islands: "...Virtually, the United States has a mortgage upon the Sandwich Islands... we have a monopoly of trade of the islands, both as imports and exports...". The trade monopoly referred to was Article IV of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, which prevented Hawaii from making a like treaty with any other nation. The editorial stated that any act of acquiring the Hawaiian Islands would be viewed by the United States government as an unfriendly act.
The New York Tribune quoted Armstrong's response that the rumors were "frivolous and utterly false". Immediately below the quote from Armstrong was a different twist on the rumor from San Francisco, also dated July 16, and printed as fact. Sourced to "a number of the most prominent planters and merchants from the Sandwich Islands", it alleged a scheme by the king and Celso Caesar Moreno to import 1,000,000 Chinese men (but no women), conferring instant citizenship upon them, and reaping a \$7 per head tax. The 1878 census population count for the entire kingdom had been only 57,985. As the tale went, Kalākaua would then hand the deed to the islands over to the Chinese government. The slant on that story was that Kalākaua's tour was his way of getting out of town after the plan backfired when vetoed by the Hawaiian government.
Upon their return trip to New York, The Sun newspaper quoted Judd about the rumor of the Hawaiian Islands being for sale: "...there is no truth in it whatsoever. It is perfectly absurd." Dismissing the issue of possible annexation, Judd pinpointed the source as coming from England: "This was thought to be such a serious matter that the British government sent two men of war to Honolulu."
## Aftermath
### Immigration
Minister of the Interior Henry A. P. Carter and Abraham Hoffnung were sent to Portugal in December 1881 to negotiate immigration details, signing a provisional convention on May 5, 1882. The steamship Monarch arrived in Honolulu on June 9, 1882, carrying 859 Portuguese immigrants, 458 of whom were women and children.
The United States passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 to deal with what was believed to be an excess of Chinese labor-class immigrants, in particular in California. Many who were already in the United States, or were en route, went to Hawaii, and the islands were flooded with Chinese men. In 1883, between March and May, 3,400 Chinese male laborers arrived in Hawaii. The Hawaiian legislature then restricted immigration of Chinese men to 2,400 per year. Between 1878 and 1884, the population of Chinese laborers in Hawaii tripled.
The first 943 contract laborers from Japan after Kalākaua's visit arrived February 8, 1885. Included in that influx were 159 women and 108 children. The Pacific Commercial Advertiser credited Kalākaua, through his efforts, influence, and "genial character", as being the major factor in the new labor force. In 1985, a bronze statue of Kalākaua was donated to the City and County of Honolulu to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the arrival of the first Japanese laborers after the king's visit to Japan. It was commissioned by the Oahu Kanyaku Imin Centennial Committee on behalf of the Japanese-American community of Hawaii. The statue is located at the corner of Kalakaua and Kapiolani avenues in Waikiki.
Armstrong's report was dismissive of any possibility of immigration from India, specifically East India. Based on their caste system, he stated that those who would emigrate would be "the ignorant and those with the least moral and intellectual power". He was repulsed by the Hindu and Muslim faiths. Among women immigrants from India, Armstrong believed, would be "single women who have gone astray", of insufficient moral character for Hawaii. An editorial in the December 17, 1881 issue of The Pacific Commercial Advertiser rebuked Armstrong's analysis of the Indian population. As a followup to goodwill generated by Kalākaua's visit, Curtis P. Iaukea was dispatched to India and England in later years to explore the possibility of Indian immigration for sugar plantation labor.
In 1904, 23 years after the voyage, Armstrong published Around the World with a King, his daily journal of the trip. This publication has been criticized for errors, inconsistencies and Armstrong's satirical writing style.
### Kalākaua
Not everybody was enthusiastic about Kalākaua's journey. In Hawaii's Story, Liliʻuokalani defended her brother's efforts against those who she felt "grossly misjudged and even slandered" him. She gave no names, but said there were those who believed, or wanted to persuade others to believe, that Kalākaua was using labor immigration as a cover story to gratify his selfish desire to see the world.
The 1881 year-end retrospective of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser was focused on Kalākaua's journey. The newspaper took a wait-and-see attitude about what the impact of the tour would be, but looked optimistically towards the kingdom having a more secure future as an independent nation. It gave much credit to Liliʻuokalani for rising to the occasion as a capable ruler who gained respect for her performance as temporary Regent. Kalākaua was acknowledged as having brought Hawaii to the forefront of the world's attention. He was praised for his personal qualities of leadership and personality, as well as for his positive interaction with global leaders. A smaller section in same day's newspaper noted that since the journey, there had been a global increase of literary publications pertaining to Hawaii.
Thrum's Hawaiian Almanac and Annual for 1883 reported Kalākaua's tour expense appropriated by the government as \$22,500, although his personal correspondence indicates he exceeded that early on, and exact tallies of the trip are not known. Any non-government private expenses or debts would not necessarily have become public. In a letter to Liliʻuokalani in June, the king stated they were already in danger of running out of funds to complete the trip, and that money was owed to Italy for the education of the young men who had been entrusted to Moreno. The many awards and decorations he bestowed during the trip cost the kingdom more money.
The elaborate style of European monarchies left a favorable impression on Kalākaua. Construction on Iolani Palace had begun in 1879, and was ongoing when Kalākaua was touring the world, with an appropriation from the legislature of \$80,000. Even though it was not fully completed until December 1882, the king was living there prior to his departure on his world tour. The influence of European palaces was reflected in the interior design and expensive furnishings. The final cost was \$343,595. Immediately upon completion, the king invited all 120 members of Lodge Le Progres de L'Oceanie to the palace for a lodge meeting.
Electric lighting did not come to Honolulu for another 31⁄2 years, when Iolani Palace led the way with the first electric lights in the kingdom. The monarchy invited the public to attend the first-night lighting ceremonies, and 5,000 people showed up. The Royal Hawaiian Band entertained, refreshments were served, and the king on horseback paraded his troops around the grounds.
His expenditures in trying to remold Hawaii's monarchy into the European model added to the public debt, helping to increase the kingdom's expenditures on the monarchy by 50%. Kalākaua decided to have the coronation he had previously been denied due to the political climate when he was elected. On the 1883 anniversary of his 9th year in office, an elaborate public coronation ceremony was held at expenses exceeding \$50,000. Kalākaua crowned himself. In 1886, Kalākaua's two-week 50th birthday Jubilee added more expense, reported by Harper's Weekly to be \$75,000.
These expenses were not the sole cause of the 1887 Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, which Kalākaua was forced to sign, but representative of a pattern of excessive spending and grand schemes, under the helm of Walter Murray Gibson, that did lead to it. Gibson was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs for two non-consecutive terms, on May 20, 1882, and again on October 13, 1886. He became Minister of the Interior and Prime Minister of Hawaii on June 30, 1886. Gibson encouraged and approved the king's excessive expenditures, and is thought to have been the driving force behind some of them, not the least of which was the \$100,000 purchase of a state steamboat for travel to the Kingdom of Samoa as part of Kalākaua's plan to form a Polynesian Confederation.
## See also
- Bibliography of Kalākaua
- Kalākaua's 1874–75 state visit to the United States
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Horace Greeley
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American politician and publisher (1811–1872)
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"19th-century American newspaper editors",
"19th-century American newspaper founders",
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"19th-century Christian universalists",
"Activists from New Hampshire",
"American abolitionists",
"American male journalists",
"American people of English descent",
"American people of Scotch-Irish descent",
"American social democrats",
"Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery",
"Candidates in the 1872 United States presidential election",
"Democratic Party (United States) presidential nominees",
"Fourierists",
"Horace Greeley",
"Left-wing populism in the United States",
"Members of the Universalist Church of America",
"New York (state) Liberal Republicans",
"New York (state) Republicans",
"New-York Tribune personnel",
"People from Amherst, New Hampshire",
"People from Chappaqua, New York",
"People of New York (state) in the American Civil War",
"Whig Party members of the United States House of Representatives from New York (state)"
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Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American newspaper editor and publisher who was the founder and editor of the New-York Tribune. Long active in politics, he served briefly as a congressman from New York, and was the unsuccessful candidate of the new Liberal Republican Party in the 1872 presidential election against incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant, who won by a landslide.
Greeley was born to a poor family in Amherst, New Hampshire. He was apprenticed to a printer in Vermont and went to New York City in 1831 to seek his fortune. He wrote for or edited several publications, involved himself in Whig Party politics, and took a significant part in William Henry Harrison's successful 1840 presidential campaign.
The following year, Greeley founded the Tribune, which became the highest-circulating newspaper in the country through weekly editions sent by mail. Among many other issues, he urged the settlement of the American Old West, which he saw as a land of opportunity for the young and the unemployed. He popularized the slogan "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country." He endlessly promoted utopian reforms such as socialism, vegetarianism, agrarianism, feminism, and temperance and hired the best talent that he could find.
Greeley's alliance with William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed led to his serving three months in the US House of Representatives, where he angered many by investigating Congress in his newspaper. In 1854, he helped found the Republican Party. Republican newspapers across the nation regularly reprinted his editorials. During the Civil War, he mostly supported President Abraham Lincoln but urged him to commit to the end of slavery before Lincoln was willing to do so. After Lincoln's assassination, he supported the Radical Republicans in opposition to President Andrew Johnson. He broke with the Radicals and with Republican President Ulysses Grant because of the party's corruption and Greeley's view that Reconstruction-era policies were no longer needed.
Greeley was the new Liberal Republican Party's presidential nominee in 1872. He lost in a landslide despite having the additional support of the Democratic Party. He was devastated by the death of his wife five days before the election and died one month later, prior to the meeting of the Electoral College.
## Early life
Greeley was born on February 3, 1811, on a small farm about five miles from Amherst, New Hampshire. He could not breathe for the first twenty minutes of his life. It is suggested that this deprivation may have caused him to develop Asperger's syndrome—some of his biographers, such as Mitchell Snay, maintain that this condition would account for his eccentric behaviors in later life. His father's family was of English descent, and his forebears included early settlers of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, while his mother's family descended from Scots-Irish immigrants from the village of Garvagh in County Londonderry who had settled Londonderry, New Hampshire. Some of Greeley's maternal ancestors were present at the siege of Derry during the Williamite War in Ireland in 1689.
Greeley was the son of poor farmers Zaccheus and Mary (Woodburn) Greeley. Zaccheus was not successful, and moved his family several times, as far west as Pennsylvania. Horace attended the local schools and was a brilliant student.
Seeing the boy's intelligence, some neighbors offered to pay Horace's way at Phillips Exeter Academy, but the Greeleys were too proud to accept charity. In 1820, Zaccheus's financial reverses caused him to flee New Hampshire with his family lest he be imprisoned for debt, and settle in Vermont. Even as his father struggled to make a living as a hired hand, Horace Greeley read everything he could—the Greeleys had a neighbor who let Horace use his library. In 1822, Horace ran away from home to become a printer's apprentice, but was told he was too young.
In 1826, at age 15, Greeley was made a printer's apprentice to Amos Bliss, editor of the Northern Spectator, a newspaper in East Poultney, Vermont. There, he learned the mechanics of a printer's job, and acquired a reputation as the town encyclopedia, reading his way through the local library. When the paper closed in 1830, the young man went west to join his family, living near Erie, Pennsylvania. He remained there only briefly, going from town to town seeking newspaper employment, and was hired by the Erie Gazette. Although ambitious for greater things, he remained until 1831 to help support his father. While there, he became a Universalist, breaking from his Congregationalist upbringing.
## First efforts at publishing
In late 1831, Greeley went to New York City to seek his fortune. There were many young printers in New York who had likewise come to the metropolis, and he could only find short-term work. In 1832, Greeley worked as an employee of the publication Spirit of the Times. He built his resources and set up a print shop in that year. In 1833, he tried his hand with Horatio D. Sheppard at editing a daily newspaper, the New York Morning Post, which was not a success. Despite this failure and its attendant financial loss, Greeley published the thrice-weekly Constitutionalist, which mostly printed lottery results.
On March 22, 1834, he published the first issue of The New-Yorker in partnership with Jonas Winchester. It was less expensive than other literary magazines of the time and published both contemporary ditties and political commentary. Circulation reached 9,000, then a sizable number, yet it was ill-managed and eventually fell victim to the economic Panic of 1837. He also published the campaign newssheet of the new Whig Party in New York for the 1834 campaign, and came to believe in its positions, including free markets with government assistance in developing the nation.
Soon after his move to New York City, Greeley met Mary Young Cheney. Both were living at a boarding house run on the diet principles of Sylvester Graham, eschewing meat, alcohol, coffee, tea, and spices, as well as abstaining from the use of tobacco. Greeley was subscribing to Graham's principles at the time, and to the end of his life rarely ate meat. Mary Cheney, a schoolteacher, moved to North Carolina to take a teaching job in 1835. They were married in Warrenton, North Carolina, on July 5, 1836, and an announcement duly appeared in The New-Yorker eleven days later. Greeley had stopped over in Washington, D.C., on his way south to observe Congress. He took no honeymoon with his new wife, returning to work while his wife took up a teaching job in New York City.
One of the positions taken by The New-Yorker was that the unemployed of the cities should seek lives in the developing American West (in the 1830s, the West encompassed today's Midwestern states). The harsh winter of 1836–1837 and the financial crisis that developed soon after made many New Yorkers homeless and destitute. In his journal, Greeley urged new immigrants to buy guide books on the West, and Congress to make public lands available for purchase at cheap rates to settlers. He told his readers, "Fly, scatter through the country, go to the Great West, anything rather than remain here ... the West is the true destination." In 1838, he advised "any young man" about to start in the world, "Go to the West: there your capabilities are sure to be appreciated and your energy and industry rewarded."
In 1838, Greeley met Albany editor Thurlow Weed. Weed spoke for a liberal faction of the Whigs in his newspaper, the Albany Evening Journal. He hired Greeley as editor of the state Whig newspaper for the upcoming campaign. The newspaper, the Jeffersonian, premiered in February 1838 and helped elect the Whig candidate for governor, William H. Seward. In 1839, Greeley worked for several journals, and took a month-long break to go as far west as Detroit.
Greeley was deeply involved in the campaign of the Whig candidate for president in 1840, William Henry Harrison. He published the major Whig periodical, the Log Cabin, and also wrote many of the pro-Harrison songs that marked the campaign. These songs were sung at mass meetings, many organized and led by Greeley. According to biographer Robert C. Williams, "Greeley's lyrics swept the country and roused Whig voters to action." Funds raised by Weed helped distribute the Log Cabin widely. Harrison and his running mate John Tyler were easily elected.
## Editor of the Tribune
### Early years (1841–1848)
By the end of the 1840 campaign, the Log Cabin'''s circulation had risen to 80,000 and Greeley decided to establish a daily newspaper, the New-York Tribune. At the time, New York had many newspapers, dominated by James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald, which, with a circulation of about 55,000, had more readers than its combined competition. As technology advanced, it became cheaper and easier to publish a newspaper, and the daily press came to dominate the weekly, which had once been the more common format for news periodicals. Greeley borrowed money from friends to get started, and published the first issue of the Tribune on April 10, 1841—the day of a memorial parade in New York for President Harrison, who had died after a month in office and been replaced by Vice President Tyler.
In the first issue, Greeley promised that his newspaper would be a "new morning Journal of Politics, Literature, and General Intelligence". New Yorkers were not initially receptive; the first week's receipts were \$92 and expenses \$525. The paper was sold for a cent a copy by newsboys who purchased bundles of papers at a discount. The price of advertising was initially four cents a line but was quickly raised to six cents. Through the 1840s, the Tribune was four pages, that is, a single sheet folded. It initially had 600 subscribers and 5,000 copies were sold of the first issue.
In the early days, Greeley's chief assistant was Henry J. Raymond, who a decade later founded The New York Times. To place the Tribune on a sound financial footing, Greeley sold a half-interest in it to attorney Thomas McElrath (1807–1888), who became publisher of the Tribune (Greeley was editor) and ran the business side. Politically, the Tribune backed Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, who had unsuccessfully sought the presidential nomination that fell to Harrison, and supported Clay's American System for development of the country. Greeley was one of the first newspaper editors to have a full-time correspondent in Washington, an innovation quickly followed by his rivals. Part of Greeley's strategy was to make the Tribune a newspaper of national scope, not merely local. One factor in establishing the paper nationally was the Weekly Tribune, created in September 1841 when the Log Cabin and The New-Yorker were merged. With an initial subscription price of \$2 a year, this was sent to many across the United States by mail and was especially popular in the Midwest. In December 1841, Greeley was offered the editorship of the national Whig newspaper, the Madisonian. He demanded full control, and declined when not given it.
Greeley, in his paper, initially supported the Whig program. As divisions between Clay and President Tyler became apparent, he supported the Kentucky senator and looked to a Clay nomination for president in 1844. However, when Clay was nominated by the Whigs, he was defeated by the Democrat, former Tennessee governor James K. Polk, though Greeley worked hard on Clay's behalf. Greeley had taken positions in opposition to slavery as editor of The New-Yorker in the late 1830s, opposing the annexation of the slaveholding Republic of Texas to the United States. In the 1840s, Greeley became an increasingly vocal opponent of the expansion of slavery.
Greeley hired Margaret Fuller in 1844 as first literary editor of the Tribune, for which she wrote over 200 articles. She lived with the Greeley family for several years, and when she moved to Italy, he made her a foreign correspondent. He promoted the work of Henry David Thoreau, serving as literary agent and seeing to it that Thoreau's work was published. Ralph Waldo Emerson also benefited from Greeley's promotion. Historian Allan Nevins explained:
> The Tribune set a new standard in American journalism by its combination of energy in newsgathering with good taste, high moral standards, and intellectual appeal. Police reports, scandals, dubious medical advertisements, and flippant personalities were barred from its pages; the editorials were vigorous but usually temperate; the political news was the most exact in the city; book reviews and book-extracts were numerous; and as an inveterate lecturer Greeley gave generous space to lectures. The paper appealed to substantial and thoughtful people.
Greeley, who had met his wife at a Graham boarding house, became enthusiastic about other social movements that did not last and promoted them in his paper. He subscribed to the views of Charles Fourier, a French social thinker, then recently deceased, who proposed the establishment of settlements called "phalanxes" with a given number of people from various walks of life, who would function as a corporation and among whose members profits would be shared. Greeley, in addition to promoting Fourierism in the Tribune, was associated with two such settlements, both of which eventually failed, though the town that eventually developed on the site of the one in Pennsylvania was after his death renamed Greeley.
### Congressman (1848–1849)
In November 1848, Congressman David S. Jackson, a Democrat, of New York's 6th district was unseated for election fraud. Jackson's term was to expire in March 1849 but, during the 19th century, Congress convened annually in December, making it important to fill the seat. Under the laws then in force, the Whig committee from the Sixth District chose Greeley to run in the special election for the remainder of the term, though they did not select him as their candidate for the seat in the following Congress. The Sixth District, or Sixth Ward as it was commonly called, was mostly Irish-American, and Greeley proclaimed his support for Irish efforts towards independence from the United Kingdom. He easily won the November election and took his seat when Congress convened in December 1848. Greeley's selection was procured by the influence of his ally, Thurlow Weed.
As a congressman for three months, Greeley introduced legislation for a homestead act that would allow settlers who improved land to purchase it at low rates—a fourth of what speculators would pay. He was quickly noticed because he launched a series of attacks on legislative privileges, taking note of which congressmen were missing votes, and questioning the office of House Chaplain. This was enough to make him unpopular. But he outraged his colleagues when on December 22, 1848, the Tribune published evidence that many congressmen had been paid excessive sums as travel allowance. In January 1849, Greeley supported a bill that would have corrected the issue, but it was defeated. He was so disliked, he wrote a friend, that he had "divided the House into two parties—one that would like to see me extinguished and the other that wouldn't be satisfied without a hand in doing it."
Other legislation introduced by Greeley, all of which failed, included attempts to end flogging in the Navy and to ban alcohol from its ships. He tried to change the name of the United States to "Columbia", abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and increase tariffs. One lasting effect of the term of Congressman Greeley was his friendship with a fellow Whig, serving his only term in the House, Illinois's Abraham Lincoln. Greeley's term ended after March 3, 1849, and he returned to New York and the Tribune, having, according to Williams, "failed to achieve much except notoriety".
### Influence (1849–1860)
By the end of the 1840s, Greeley's Tribune was not only solidly established in New York as a daily paper, it was highly influential nationally through its weekly edition, which circulated in rural areas and small towns. Journalist Bayard Taylor deemed its influence in the Midwest second only to that of the Bible. According to Williams, the Tribune could mold public opinion through Greeley's editorials more effectively than could the president. Greeley sharpened those skills over time, laying down what future Secretary of State John Hay, who worked for the Tribune in the 1870s, deemed the "Gospel according to St. Horace".
The Tribune remained a Whig paper, but Greeley took an independent course. In 1848, he had been slow to endorse the Whig presidential nominee, General Zachary Taylor, a Louisianan and hero of the Mexican–American War. Greeley opposed both the war and the expansion of slavery into the new territories seized from Mexico and feared Taylor would support expansion as president. Greeley considered endorsing former President Martin Van Buren, candidate of the Free Soil Party, but finally endorsed Taylor, who was elected; the editor was rewarded for his loyalty with the congressional term. Greeley vacillated on support for the Compromise of 1850, which gave victories to both sides of the slavery issue, before finally opposing it. In the 1852 presidential campaign, he supported the Whig candidate, General Winfield Scott, but savaged the Whig platform for its support of the Compromise. "We defy it, execrate it, spit upon it." Such party divisions contributed to Scott's defeat by former New Hampshire senator Franklin Pierce.
In 1853, with the party increasingly divided over the slavery issue, Greeley printed an editorial disclaiming the paper's identity as Whig and declaring it to be nonpartisan. He was confident that the paper would not suffer financially, trusting in reader loyalty. Some in the party were not sorry to see him go: the Republic, a Whig organ, mocked Greeley and his beliefs: "If a party is to be built up and maintained on Fourierism, Mesmerism, Maine Liquor laws, Spiritual Rappings, Kossuthism, Socialism, Abolitionism, and forty other isms, we have no disposition to mix with any such companions." When, in 1854, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas introduced his Kansas–Nebraska Bill, allowing residents of each territory to decide whether it would be slave or free, Greeley strongly fought the legislation in his newspaper. After it passed, and the Border War broke out in Kansas Territory, Greeley was part of efforts to send free-state settlers there, and to arm them. In return, proponents of slavery recognized Greeley and the Tribune as adversaries, stopping shipments of the paper to the South and harassing local agents. Nevertheless, by 1858, the Tribune reached 300,000 subscribers through the weekly edition, and it would continue as the foremost American newspaper through the years of the Civil War.
The Kansas–Nebraska Act helped destroy the Whig Party, but a new party with opposition to the spread of slavery at its heart had been under discussion for some years. Beginning in 1853, Greeley participated in the discussions that led to the founding of the Republican Party and may have coined its name. Greeley attended the first New York state Republican Convention in 1854 and was disappointed not to be nominated either for governor or lieutenant governor. The switch in parties coincided with the end of two of his longtime political alliances: in December 1854, Greeley wrote that the political partnership between Weed, William Seward (who was by then senator after serving as governor) and himself was ended "by the withdrawal of the junior partner". Greeley was angered over patronage disputes and felt that Seward was courting the rival The New York Times for support.
In 1853, Greeley purchased a farm in rural Chappaqua, New York, where he experimented with farming techniques. In 1856, he designed and built Rehoboth, one of the first concrete structures in the United States. In 1856, Greeley published a campaign biography by an anonymous author for the first Republican presidential candidate, John C. Frémont.
The Tribune continued to print a wide variety of material. In 1851, its managing editor, Charles A. Dana, recruited Karl Marx as a foreign correspondent in London. Marx collaborated with Friedrich Engels on his work for the Tribune, which continued for over a decade, covering 500 articles. Greeley felt compelled to print, "Mr. Marx has very decided opinions of his own, with some of which we are far from agreeing, but those who do not read his letters are neglecting one of the most instructive sources of information on the great questions of current European politics."
Greeley sponsored a host of reforms, including pacifism and feminism and especially the ideal of the hard-working free laborer. Greeley demanded reforms to make all citizens free and equal. He envisioned virtuous citizens who would eradicate corruption. He talked endlessly about progress, improvement, and freedom, while calling for harmony between labor and capital. Greeley's editorials promoted social democratic reforms and were widely reprinted. They influenced the free-labor ideology of the Whigs and the radical wing of the Republican Party, especially in promoting the free-labor ideology. Before 1848 he sponsored an American version of Fourierist socialist reform. but backed away after the failed revolutions of 1848 in Europe. To promote multiple reforms Greeley hired a roster of writers who later became famous in their own right, including Margaret Fuller, Charles A. Dana, George William Curtis, William Henry Fry, Bayard Taylor, Julius Chambers, and Henry Jarvis Raymond, who later co-founded The New York Times. For many years George Ripley was the staff literary critic. Jane Swisshelm was one of the first women hired by a major newspaper.
In 1859, Greeley traveled across the continent to see the West for himself, to write about it for the Tribune, and to publicize the need for a transcontinental railroad. He also planned to give speeches to promote the Republican Party. In May 1859, he went to Chicago, and then to Lawrence in Kansas Territory, and was unimpressed by the local people. Nevertheless, after speaking before the first ever Kansas Republican Party Convention at Osawatomie, Kansas, Greeley took one of the first stagecoaches to Denver, seeing the town then in course of formation as a mining camp of the Pike's Peak Gold Rush. Sending dispatches back to the Tribune, Greeley took the Overland Trail, reaching Salt Lake City, where he conducted a two-hour interview with the Mormon leader Brigham Young—the first newspaper interview Young had given. Greeley encountered Native Americans and was sympathetic but, like many of his time, deemed Indian culture inferior. In California, he toured widely and gave many addresses.
### 1860 presidential election
Although he remained on cordial terms with Senator Seward, Greeley never seriously considered supporting him in his bid for the Republican nomination for president. Instead, during the run-up to the 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago, he pressed the candidacy of former Missouri representative Edward Bates, an opponent of the spread of slavery who had freed his own slaves. In his newspaper, in speeches, and in conversation, Greeley pushed Bates as a man who could win the North and even make inroads in the South. Nevertheless, when one of the dark horse candidates for the Republican nomination, Abraham Lincoln, came to New York to give an address at Cooper Union, Greeley urged his readers to go hear Lincoln, and was among those who accompanied him to the platform. Greeley thought of Lincoln as a possible nominee for vice president.
Greeley attended the convention as a substitute for Oregon delegate Leander Holmes, who was unable to attend. In Chicago, he promoted Bates but deemed his cause hopeless and felt that Seward would be nominated. In conversations with other delegates, he predicted that, if nominated, Seward could not carry crucial battleground states such as Pennsylvania. Greeley's estrangement from Seward was not widely known, giving the editor more credibility. Greeley (and Seward) biographer Glyndon G. Van Deusen noted that it is uncertain how great a part Greeley played in Seward's defeat by Lincoln—he had little success gaining delegates for Bates. On the first two ballots, Seward led Lincoln, but on the second only by a small margin. After the third ballot, on which Lincoln was nominated, Greeley was seen among the Oregon delegation, a broad smile on his face. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, "it is hard to imagine Lincoln letting Greeley's resentment smolder for years as Seward did".
Seward's forces made Greeley a target of their anger at the senator's defeat. One subscriber cancelled, regretting the three-cent stamp he had to use on the letter; Greeley supplied a replacement. When he was attacked in print, Greeley responded in kind. He launched a campaign against corruption in the New York Legislature, hoping voters would defeat incumbents and the new legislators would elect him to the Senate when Seward's term expired in 1861. (Before 1913, senators were elected by state legislatures.) But his main activity during the campaign of 1860 was boosting Lincoln and denigrating the other presidential candidates. He made it clear that a Republican administration would not interfere with slavery where it already was and denied that Lincoln was in favor of voting rights for African Americans. He kept up the pressure until Lincoln was elected in November.
Lincoln soon let it be known that Seward would be Secretary of State, which meant that he would not be a candidate for re-election to the Senate. Weed wanted William M. Evarts elected in his place, while the anti-Seward forces in New York gathered around Greeley. The crucial battleground was the Republican caucus, as the party held the majority in the legislature. Greeley's forces did not have enough votes to send him to the Senate, but they had enough strength to block Evarts's candidacy. Weed threw his support to Ira Harris, who had already received several votes, and who was chosen by the caucus and elected by the legislature in February 1861. Weed was content to have blocked the editor, and stated that he had "paid the first installment on a large debt to Mr. Greeley".
### Civil War
#### War breaks out
After Lincoln's election, there was talk of secession in the South. The Tribune was initially in favor of peaceful separation, with the South becoming a separate nation. According to an editorial on November 9:
> If the Cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless.... And whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets.
Similar editorials appeared through January 1861, after which Tribune editorials took a hard line on the South, opposing concessions. Williams concludes that "for a brief moment, Horace Greeley had believed that peaceful secession might be a form of freedom preferable to civil war". This brief flirtation with disunion would have consequences for Greeley—it was used against him when he ran for president in 1872.
In the days leading up to Lincoln's inauguration, the Tribune headed its editorial columns each day, in large capital letters: "No compromise!/No concession to traitors!/The Constitution as it is!" Greeley attended the inauguration, sitting close to Senator Douglas, as the Tribune hailed the beginning of Lincoln's presidency. When southern forces attacked Fort Sumter, the Tribune regretted the loss of the fort, but applauded the fact that war to subdue the rebels, who formed the Confederate States of America, would now take place. The paper criticized Lincoln for not being quick to use force.
Through the spring and early summer of 1861, Greeley and the Tribune beat the drum for a Union attack. "On to Richmond", a phrase coined by a Tribune stringer, became the watchword of the newspaper as Greeley urged the occupation of the rebel capital of Richmond before the Confederate Congress could meet on July 20. In part because of the public pressure, in mid July Lincoln sent the half-trained Union Army into the field at the First Battle of Bull Run, where it was soundly beaten. The defeat threw Greeley into despair, and he may have suffered a nervous breakdown.
#### "The Prayer of Twenty Millions"
Restored to health by two weeks at the farm he had purchased in Chappaqua, Greeley returned to the Tribune and a policy of general backing of the Lincoln administration, even having kind words to say about Secretary Seward, his old foe. He was supportive even during the military defeats of the first year of the war. Late in 1861, he proposed to Lincoln through an intermediary that the president provide him with advance information as to its policies, in exchange for friendly coverage in the Tribune. Lincoln eagerly accepted, "having him firmly behind me will be as helpful to me as an army of one hundred thousand men."
By early 1862, however, Greeley was again sometimes critical of the administration, frustrated by the failure to win decisive military victories, and perturbed at the president's slowness to commit to the emancipation of the slaves once the Confederacy was defeated, something the Tribune was urging in its editorials. This was a change in Greeley's thinking which began after First Manassas, a shift from preservation of the Union being the primary war purpose to wanting the war to end slavery. By March, the only action against slavery that Lincoln had backed was a proposal for compensated emancipation in the border states that had remained loyal to the Union, though he signed legislation abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. Lincoln supposedly asked a Tribune correspondent, "What in the world is the matter with Uncle Horace? Why can't he restrain himself and wait a little while?"
Greeley's prodding of Lincoln culminated in a letter to him on August 19, 1862, reprinted on the following day in the Tribune as "The Prayer of Twenty Millions". By this time, Lincoln had informed his Cabinet of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation he had composed, and Greeley was told of it the same day the prayer was printed. In his letter, Greeley demanded action on emancipation and strict enforcement of the Confiscation Acts. Lincoln must "fight slavery with liberty", and not fight "wolves with the devices of a sheep."
Lincoln's reply would become famous, much more so than the prayer that provoked it. "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union." Lincoln's statement angered abolitionists; William Seward's wife Frances complained to her husband that Lincoln had made it seem "that the mere keeping together a number of states is more important than human freedom." Greeley felt Lincoln had not truly answered him, "but I'll forgive him everything if he'll issue the proclamation". When Lincoln did, on September 22, Greeley hailed the Emancipation Proclamation as a "great boon of Freedom". According to Williams, "Lincoln's war for Union was now also Greeley's war for emancipation."
#### Draft riots and peace efforts
After the Union victory at Gettysburg in early July 1863, the Tribune wrote that the rebellion would be quickly "stamped out". A week after the battle, the New York City draft riots erupted. Greeley and the Tribune were generally supportive of conscription, though feeling that the rich should not be allowed to evade it by hiring substitutes. Support for the draft made them targets of the mob, and the Tribune Building was surrounded, and at least once invaded. Greeley secured arms from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and 150 soldiers kept the building secure. Mary Greeley and her children were at the farm in Chappaqua; a mob threatened them but dispersed without doing harm.
In August 1863, Greeley was requested by a firm of Hartford publishers to write a history of the war. Greeley agreed, and over the next eight months he penned a 600-page volume, which would be the first of two, entitled The American Conflict. The books were very successful, selling a total of 225,000 copies by 1870, a large sale for the time.
Throughout the war, Greeley played with ideas as to how to settle it. In 1862, Greeley had approached the French minister to Washington, Henri Mercier, to discuss a mediated settlement. However, Seward rejected such talks, and the prospect of European intervention receded after the bloody Union victory at Antietam in September 1862. In July 1864, Greeley received word that there were Confederate commissioners in Canada, empowered to offer peace. In fact, the men were in Niagara Falls, Canada, in order to aid Peace Democrats and otherwise undermine the Union war effort, but they played along when Greeley journeyed to Niagara Falls, at Lincoln's request. The president was willing to consider any deal that included reunion and emancipation. The Confederates had no credentials and were unwilling to accompany Greeley to Washington under safe conduct. Greeley returned to New York, and the episode, when it became public, embarrassed the administration. Lincoln said nothing publicly concerning Greeley's credulous conduct, but he privately indicated that he had no confidence in him anymore.
Greeley did not initially support Lincoln for nomination in 1864, casting about for other candidates. In February, he wrote in the Tribune that Lincoln could not be elected to a second term. Nevertheless, no candidate made a serious challenge to Lincoln, and Lincoln was nominated in June, which the Tribune applauded slightly. In August, fearing a Democratic victory and acceptance of the Confederacy, Greeley engaged in a plot to get a new convention to nominate another candidate, with Lincoln withdrawing. The plot came to nothing. Once Atlanta was taken by Union forces on September 3, Greeley became a fervent supporter of Lincoln. Greeley was gratified by both Lincoln's re-election and continued Union victories.
### Reconstruction
As the war drew to a close in April 1865, Greeley and the Tribune urged magnanimity towards the defeated Confederates, arguing that making martyrs of Confederate leaders would only inspire future rebels. This talk of moderation ceased when Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Many concluded that Lincoln had fallen as the result of a final rebel plot, and the new president, Andrew Johnson, offered \$100,000 for the capture of fugitive Confederate president Jefferson Davis. After the rebel leader was caught, Greeley initially advocated that "punishment be meted out in accord with a just verdict".
Through 1866, Greeley editorialized that Davis, who was being held at Fortress Monroe, should either be set free or put on trial. Davis's wife Varina urged Greeley to use his influence to gain her husband's release. In May 1867, a Richmond judge set bail for the former Confederate president at \$100,000. Greeley was among those who signed the bail bond, and the two men met briefly at the courthouse. This act resulted in public anger against Greeley in the North. Sales of the second volume of his history (published in 1866) declined sharply. Subscriptions to the Tribune (especially the Weekly Tribune) also dropped off, though they recovered during the 1868 election.
Initially supportive of Andrew Johnson's lenient Reconstruction policies, Greeley soon became disillusioned, as the president's plan allowed the quick formation of state governments without securing suffrage for the freedman. When Congress convened in December 1865, and gradually took control of Reconstruction, he was generally supportive, as Radical Republicans pushed hard for universal male suffrage and civil rights for freedmen. Greeley ran for Congress in 1866 but lost badly. He ran for Senate in the legislative election held in early 1867 but lost to Roscoe Conkling.
As the president and Congress battled, Greeley remained firmly opposed to the president, and when Johnson was impeached in March 1868, Greeley and the Tribune strongly supported his removal, attacking Johnson as "an aching tooth in the national jaw, a screeching infant in a crowded lecture room," and declaring, "There can be no peace or comfort till he is out." Nevertheless, the president was acquitted by the Senate, much to Greeley's disappointment. Also in 1868, Greeley sought the Republican nomination for governor but was frustrated by the Conkling forces. Greeley supported the successful Republican presidential nominee, General Ulysses S. Grant in the 1868 election.
### Grant years
In 1868, Whitelaw Reid joined the Tribune 's staff as managing editor. In Reid, Greeley found a reliable second-in-command. Also on the Tribune's staff in the late 1860s was Mark Twain. Henry George sometimes contributed pieces, as did Bret Harte. In 1870, John Hay joined the staff as an editorial writer. Greeley soon pronounced Hay the most brilliant at that craft ever to write for the Tribune.
Greeley maintained his interest in associationism. Beginning in 1869, he was heavily involved in an attempt to found the Union Colony of Colorado, a utopia on the prairie, in a scheme led by Nathan Meeker. The new town of Greeley, Colorado Territory was named after him. He served as treasurer and lent Meeker money to keep the colony afloat. In 1871, Greeley published a book What I Know About Farming, based on his childhood experience and that from his country home in Chappaqua.
Greeley continued to seek political office, running for state comptroller in 1869 and the House of Representatives in 1870, losing both times. In 1870, President Grant offered Greeley the post of minister to Santo Domingo (today, the Dominican Republic), which he declined.
## Presidential candidate
As had been the case for much of the 19th century, political parties continued to be formed and to vanish after the Civil War. In September 1871, Missouri Senator Carl Schurz formed the Liberal Republican Party, founded on opposition to President Grant, opposition to corruption, and support of civil service reform, lower taxes, and land reform. He gathered around him an eclectic group of supporters whose only real link was their opposition to Grant, whose administration had proved increasingly corrupt (although Grant himself was not corrupt). The party needed a candidate, with a presidential election upcoming. Greeley was one of the best-known Americans, as well as being a perennial candidate for office. He was more minded to consider a run for the Republican nomination, fearing the effect on the Tribune should he bolt the party. Nevertheless, he wanted to be president, as a Republican if possible, and if not, as a Liberal Republican.
The Liberal Republican national convention met in Cincinnati in May 1872. Greeley was spoken of as a possible candidate, as was Missouri Governor Benjamin Gratz Brown. Schurz was ineligible, being foreign-born. On the first ballot, Supreme Court Justice David Davis led, but Greeley took a narrow lead on the second ballot. Former minister to Britain Charles Francis Adams then took the lead, but on the sixth ballot, after a "spontaneous" demonstration staged by Reid, Greeley gained the nomination, with Brown as vice presidential candidate.
Ronald White writes, "No one summed up Greeley's strength and weakness better than Grant, who wrote a friend, 'He is a genius without common sense'".
The Democrats, when they met in Baltimore in July, faced a stark choice: nominate Greeley, long a thorn in their side, or split the anti-Grant vote and go on to certain defeat. They chose the former, and even adopted the Liberal Republican platform, which called for equal rights for African Americans.
Greeley resigned as editor of the Tribune for the campaign, and, unusually for the time, embarked on a speaking tour to bring his message to the people. As it was customary for candidates for major office not to actively campaign, he was attacked as a seeker after office. Nevertheless, in late July, Greeley (and others, such as former Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes) thought he would very likely be elected. Greeley campaigned on a platform of intersectional reconciliation, arguing that the war was over and the issue of slavery was resolved. He asserted that it was time to restore normalcy and end the continuing military occupation of the South.
The Republican counterattack was well financed, accusing Greeley of support for everything from treason to the Ku Klux Klan. The anti-Greeley campaign was famously and effectively summed up in the cartoons of Thomas Nast, whom Grant later credited with a major role in his re-election. Nast's cartoons showed Greeley giving bail money for Jefferson Davis, throwing mud on Grant, and shaking hands with John Wilkes Booth across Lincoln's grave. The Crédit Mobilier scandal—corruption in the financing of the Union Pacific Railroad—broke in September, but Greeley was unable to take advantage of the Grant administration's ties to the scandal as he had stock in the railroad himself, and some alleged it had been given to him in exchange for favorable coverage.
Greeley's wife Mary had returned ill from a trip to Europe in late June. Her condition worsened in October, and he effectively broke off campaigning after October 12 to be with her. She died on October 30, plunging him into despair a week before the election. Poor results for the Democrats in those states that had elections for other offices in September and October presaged defeat for Greeley, and so it proved. He received 2,834,125 votes to 3,597,132 for Grant, who secured 286 electors to 66 for Greeley. The editor-turned-candidate won only six states (out of 37): Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas.
### Final month and death
Greeley resumed the editorship of the Tribune, but quickly learned there was a movement underway to unseat him. He found himself unable to sleep, and after a final visit to the Tribune on November 13 (a week after the election) he remained under medical care. At the recommendation of a family physician, Greeley was sent to Choate House, the asylum of Dr. George Choate at Pleasantville, New York. There, he continued to worsen, and he died on November 29, with his two surviving daughters and Whitelaw Reid at his side.
His death came before the Electoral College balloted. His 66 electoral votes were divided among four others, principally Indiana governor-elect Thomas A. Hendricks and Greeley's vice presidential running mate, Benjamin Gratz Brown.
Although Greeley had requested a simple funeral, his daughters ignored his wishes and arranged a grand affair at the Church of the Divine Paternity, later the Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New York, where Greeley was a member. He is buried in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. Among the mourners were old friends, Tribune employees including Reid and Hay, his journalistic rivals, and a broad array of politicians, led by President Grant.
## Appraisal
Despite the venom that had been spewed over him in the presidential campaign, Greeley's death was widely mourned. Harper's Weekly, which had printed Nast's cartoons, wrote, "Since the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, the death of no American has been so sincerely deplored as that of Horace Greeley; and its tragical circumstances have given a peculiarly affectionate pathos to all that has been said of him." Henry Ward Beecher wrote in the Christian Union, "when Horace Greeley died, unjust and hard judgment of him died also". Harriet Beecher Stowe noted Greeley's eccentric dress, "That poor white hat! If, alas, it covered many weaknesses, it covered also much strength, much real kindness and benevolence, and much that the world will be better for".
Greeley supported liberal policies towards the fast-growing western regions; he memorably advised the ambitious to "Go West, young man." He hired Karl Marx because of his interest in coverage of working-class society and politics, attacked monopolies of all sorts, and rejected land grants to railroads. Industry would make everyone rich, he insisted, as he promoted high tariffs. He supported vegetarianism, opposed liquor, and paid serious attention to any ism anyone proposed.
Historian Iver Bernstein says:
> Greeley was an eclectic and unsystematic thinker, a one-man switch-board for the international cause of "Reform." He committed himself, all at once, to utopian and artisan socialism, to land, sexual, and dietary reform, and, of course, to anti-slavery. Indeed Greeley's great significance in the culture and politics of Civil War-era America stemmed from his attempt to accommodate intellectually the contradictions inherent in the many diverse reform movements of the time.
Greeley's view of freedom was based in the desire that all should have the opportunity to better themselves. According to his biographer, Erik S. Lunde, "a dedicated social reformer deeply sympathetic to the treatment of poor white males, slaves, free blacks, and white women, he still espoused the virtues of self-help and free enterprise". Van Deusen stated: "His genuine human sympathies, his moral fervor, even the exhibitionism that was a part of his makeup, made it inevitable that he should crusade for a better world. He did so with apostolic zeal."
Nevertheless, Greeley's effectiveness as a reformer was undermined by his idiosyncrasies: according to Williams, he "must have looked like an apparition, a man of eccentric habits dressed in an old linen coat that made him look like a farmer who came into town for supplies". Van Deusen wrote, "Greeley's effectiveness as a crusader was limited by some of his traits and characteristics. Culturally deficient, he was to the end ignorant of his own limitations, and this ignorance was a great handicap."
The Tribune remained under that name until 1924, when it merged with the New York Herald to become the New York Herald-Tribune, which was published until 1966. The name survived until 2013, when the International Herald-Tribune became the International New York Times.
The town of Greeley, Colorado is named after Horace Greeley.
There is a statue of Greeley in City Hall Park in New York, donated by the Tribune Association. Cast in 1890, it was not dedicated until 1916. A second statue of Greeley is located in Greeley Square in Midtown Manhattan. Greeley Square, at Broadway and 33rd Street, was named by the New York City Common Council in a vote after Greeley's death. Van Deusen concluded his biography of Greeley:
> More significant still was the service that Greeley performed as a result of his faith in his country and his countrymen, his belief in infinite American progress. For all his faults and shortcomings, Greeley symbolized an America that, though often shortsighted and misled, was never suffocated by the wealth pouring from its farms and furnaces ... For through his faith in the American future, a faith expressed in his ceaseless efforts to make real the promise of America, he inspired others with hope and confidence, making them feel that their dreams also had the substance of realty. It is his faith, and theirs that has given him his place in American history. In that faith he still marches among us, scolding and benevolent, exhorting us to confidence and to victory in the great struggles of our own day.
## Books written by Greeley
- The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860–64 Vol. I (1864) Vol. II (1866)
- Essays Designed to Elucidate The Science of Political Economy, While Serving To Explain and Defend The Policy of Protection to Home Industry, As a System of National Cooperation For True Elevation of Labor (1870)
- Recollections of a Busy Life (1868)
- Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859 (1860)
- "Alice and Phebe Cary", in Eminent Women of the Age; Being Narratives of the Lives and Deeds of the Most Prominent Women of the Present Generation'' (1868), pp. 164–172.
|
15,277,824 |
SMS Hessen
| 1,158,530,247 |
Battleship of the German Imperial Navy
|
[
"1903 ships",
"Auxiliary ships of the Soviet Navy",
"Braunschweig-class battleships",
"Ships built in Kiel",
"World War I battleships of Germany",
"World War II auxiliary ships of Germany"
] |
SMS Hessen was the third of five pre-dreadnought battleships of the Braunschweig class. She was laid down in 1902, was launched in September 1903, and was commissioned into the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in September 1905. Named after the state of Hesse, the ship was armed with a battery of four 28 cm (11 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). Like all other pre-dreadnoughts built at the turn of the century, Hessen was quickly made obsolete by the launching of the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought in 1906; as a result, she saw only limited service with the German fleet.
Hessen's peacetime career centered on squadron and fleet exercises and training cruises. She was involved in two accidental collisions, with a Danish steamship in 1911 and a German torpedo boat in 1913. Hessen was slated to be withdrawn from service in August 1914, but the start of World War I in July interrupted that plan and she remained in service with the High Seas Fleet. She performed a variety of roles in the first two years, serving as a guard ship at the mouth of the Elbe, patrolling the Danish straits, and supporting attacks on the British coast, including the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby in December 1914 and the Bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft in April 1916. The following month, Hessen was present at the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of the war. In the last daytime action between capital ships on 31 May, Hessen and the other pre-dreadnoughts of II Battle Squadron covered the retreat of the battered German battlecruisers away from the British battlecruiser squadron.
Jutland revealed how inadequate pre-dreadnoughts like Hessen were in the face of more modern weapons, so she and the rest of II Squadron ships were withdrawn from service with the fleet. She was decommissioned in December 1916, disarmed and used as a depot ship for the rest of the war. Hessen was one of the few obsolete battleships Germany was permitted to retain under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Rearmed, she served with the fleet in the 1920s and early 1930s, though she was withdrawn from front-line service in 1934. The following year, Hessen was converted into a radio-controlled target ship. She served in this capacity through World War II, also working as an icebreaker in the Baltic and North Seas. The ship was ceded to the Soviet Union in 1946 after the war, renamed Tsel, and served until she was scrapped in 1960.
## Design
With the passage of the Second Naval Law under the direction of Vizeadmiral (VAdm—Vice Admiral) Alfred von Tirpitz in 1900, funding was allocated for a new class of battleships, to succeed the Wittelsbach-class ships authorized under the 1898 Naval Law. By this time, Krupp, the supplier of naval artillery to the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) had developed quick-firing, 28-centimeter (11 in) guns; the largest guns that had previously incorporated the technology were the 24 cm (9.4 in) guns mounted on the Wittelsbachs. The Design Department of the Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Navy Office) adopted these guns for the new battleships, along with an increase from 15 cm (5.9 in) to 17 cm (6.7 in) for the secondary battery, owing to the increased threat from torpedo boats as torpedoes became more effective.
Though the Braunschweig class marked a significant improvement over earlier German battleships, its design fell victim to the rapid pace of technological development in the early 1900s. The British battleship HMS Dreadnought—armed with ten 30.5 cm (12 in) guns—was commissioned in December 1906, just over a year after Hessen entered service. Dreadnought's revolutionary design rendered every capital ship of the German navy obsolete, including Hessen and her sister ships.
Hessen was 127.7 m (419 ft) long overall and had a beam of 22.2 m (72 ft 10 in) and a draft of 8.1 m (26 ft 7 in) forward. She displaced 13,208 t (12,999 long tons) as designed and 14,394 t (14,167 long tons) at Full load. Her crew consisted of 35 officers and 708 enlisted men. The ship was powered by three 3-cylinder vertical triple expansion engines that drove three screws. Steam was provided by eight naval and six cylindrical Scotch marine boilers, all of which burned coal. Hessen's powerplant was rated at 16,000 metric horsepower (15,781 ihp; 11,768 kW), which generated a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). She could steam 4,530 nautical miles (8,390 km; 5,210 mi) at a cruising speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).
Hessen's armament consisted of a main battery of four 28 cm SK L/40 guns in twin-gun turrets, one fore and one aft of the central superstructure. Her secondary armament consisted of fourteen 17 cm (6.7 inch) SK L/40 guns and eighteen 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/35 quick-firing guns. The armament suite was rounded out with six 45 cm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes, all mounted in the hull below the waterline. One tube was in the bow, two were on each broadside, and the final tube was in the stern. Hessen was protected with Krupp armor. Her armored belt was 110 to 250 millimeters (4.3 to 9.8 in) thick; the heavier armor in the central citadel protected her magazines and propulsion machinery, with thinner plating at either end of the hull. Her deck was 40 mm (1.6 in) thick. The main battery turrets had 250 mm of armor plating.
## Service history
### Pre-war career
Hessen's keel was laid down on 15 January 1902, at the Germaniawerft shipyard in Kiel under yard number 100. The third unit of her class, she was ordered under the contract name "L" as a new unit for the fleet. Hessen was launched on 18 September 1903; the vessel was christened by Princess Irene of Hesse, and her brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, gave a speech. The ship began shipyard sea trials on 16 May 1905, and was commissioned on 19 September. The Kaiserliche Marine then began its own sea trials on the ship, which was assigned to II Squadron of the Active Battle Fleet. Trials lasted until 4 March 1906, at which point Hessen joined her unit, bringing the squadron to its prescribed strength of eight battleships. The year was spent conducting squadron and fleet training exercises, including a summer cruise in July and August to Norwegian waters. During the fleet maneuvers held every autumn in late August and September, the fleet conducted landing operations at Eckernförde. Further exercises took place in the North Sea in November.
On 16 February 1907, the fleet was renamed the High Seas Fleet. Maneuvers in the North Sea followed in early 1907, which included a cruise to Skagen and mock attacks on the main naval base at Kiel. Further exercises followed in May and June, after which the fleet went on a cruise to Norway. After returning, Hessen went to Swinemünde in early August, where Czar Nicholas II of Russia met the German fleet in his yacht Standart. Afterward, the fleet assembled for the maneuvers that were held every August and September. This year, the maneuvers were delayed to allow for a large fleet review, including 112 warships, for Kaiser Wilhelm II in the Schillig roadstead. In the autumn maneuvers that followed, the fleet conducted exercises in the North Sea and then joint maneuvers with the IX Army Corps around Apenrade. Hessen was the II Squadron winner of the Kaiser's Schießpreis (Shooting Prize) for excellent shooting; at the time, her gunnery officer was then-Kapitänleutnant (Captain Lieutenant) Adolf von Trotha. In November, the ship took part in unit training in the Kattegat.
Hessen participated in fleet maneuvers in February 1908 in the Baltic Sea and more fleet training off Helgoland in May and June. In July, Hessen and the rest of the fleet sailed into the Atlantic Ocean to conduct a major training cruise. Prince Heinrich, the commander of the High Seas Fleet, had pressed for such a cruise the previous year, arguing that it would prepare the fleet for overseas operations and break up the monotony of training in German waters, though tensions with Britain over the developing Anglo-German naval arms race were high. The fleet departed Kiel on 17 July, passed through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal to the North Sea, and continued on to the Atlantic. During the cruise, Hessen stopped at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands. The fleet returned to Germany on 13 August. The autumn maneuvers followed from 27 August to 12 September. Later that year, the fleet toured coastal German cities as part of an effort to increase public support for naval expenditures. The next year—1909—followed much the same pattern as in 1908. Another cruise into the Atlantic was conducted from 7 July to 1 August, during which Hessen stopped in El Ferrol, Spain. While on the way back to Germany, the High Seas Fleet was received by the British Royal Navy at Spithead. Late in the year, Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff became the commander of the High Seas Fleet. His tenure as fleet commander was marked with strategic experimentation, owing to the increased threat posed by the latest underwater weapons like submarines and naval mines, and to the fact that the new Nassau-class battleships were too wide to pass through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. Accordingly, the fleet was transferred from Kiel to Wilhelmshaven on 1 April 1910.
In May 1910, the fleet conducted training maneuvers in the Kattegat, between Norway and Denmark. These were in accordance with Holtzendorff's strategy, which envisioned drawing the Royal Navy into the narrow waters in the Kattegat. The annual summer cruise went to Norway, and was followed by fleet training, during which another fleet review was held at Danzig on 29 August. A training cruise into the Baltic followed at the end of the year. In March 1911, the fleet conducted exercises in the Skagerrak and Kattegat. Hessen and the rest of the fleet received British and American naval squadrons in Kiel in June and July. The year's autumn maneuvers were confined to the Baltic and the Kattegat. During fleet exercises on 23 August 1911, Hessen accidentally rammed and sank the Danish steamer SS Askesund. The crew of the steamer was rescued and there were no reported injuries; Hessen herself was undamaged in the collision. Another fleet review was held during the exercises for a visiting Austro-Hungarian delegation that included Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Admiral Rudolf Montecuccoli.
In February, during the very cold winter of 1911–1912, Hessen was employed as an emergency icebreaker in the Little Belt to rescue ships that were threatened by the heavy ice. In mid-1912, due to the Agadir Crisis, the summer cruise only went into the Baltic to avoid exposing the fleet during the period of heightened tension with Britain and France. In July 1913, Hessen collided with the torpedo boat G110. The torpedo boat suffered significant damage and three of its crew were killed, though it did not sink. The boat, along with the rest of her crew, was towed back to Kiel. Hessen was not significantly damaged in the accident. The annual summer cruise for 1913 returned to Norwegian waters, as did the cruise the following year. The year 1914 began quietly, with the only event of note being Hessen's visit to Sonderburg on 2 May to participate in the 50th anniversary celebrations commemorating the Battle of Dybbøl of the Second Schleswig War.
### World War I
Beginning in late 1909, the navy had begun to replace the oldest pre-dreadnought battleships with the more modern dreadnought battleships, starting with the Nassau class. As part of this process, Hessen was scheduled to be withdrawn into the reserve on 26 August 1914, with her place in II Squadron taken by the new dreadnought König, but the rising tensions in Europe during the July Crisis, which led to the outbreak of World War I, interrupted that plan. Hessen therefore remained in service with the squadron, the oldest battleship in service with the main fleet. Following Germany's entry into the war in early August, Hessen and the rest of the squadron were sent to the Altenbruch roadstead to support the defense of the German Bight at the mouth of the Elbe. In October, the squadron went to the Baltic for maneuvers, and while transiting the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal on 26 October, she ran aground and had to be pulled free by tugboats. The squadron returned to the North Sea on 17 November, having completed the training exercises.
II Squadron joined the rest of the High Seas Fleet for offensive operations against Britain. The first of these was the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby on 15 December. The battlecruisers of the I Scouting Group attacked the towns in an attempt to lure out part of the British Grand Fleet, while the battleships of the High Seas Fleet waited in support in the hopes of ambushing and destroying any British forces that sortied out. During the night of 15–16 December, the German battle fleet of twelve dreadnoughts and eight pre-dreadnoughts came to within 10 nmi (19 km; 12 mi) of an isolated squadron of six British battleships. Skirmishes between the rival destroyer screens convinced the German commander, Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, that he was confronted with the entire Grand Fleet, and so he broke off the engagement and turned for home.
Hessen was in the shipyard in Kiel for maintenance from 22 February 1915 to 6 March, after which she returned to guard duties off Altenbruch, starting on 10 March. Squadron exercises in the Baltic took place from 18 March to 1 April, and further short periods of maintenance in Kiel followed on 17–18 May, 29–30 May, and 4–26 June; during the last stay, she had supplementary oil-burning equipment installed for her boilers. She spent the rest of the year in the North Sea, taking part in sorties on 11–12 September and 23–24 October. From 6 to 23 December, she went to Wilhelmshaven for maintenance, which was followed by squadron training in the Baltic from 25 December to 20 January 1916. She immediately went to the Reiherstiegwerft in Hamburg for more repair work, which lasted from 22 January to 15 March. On 26 March, after more Baltic exercises, Hessen was pronounced ready for further offensive operations.
On 5 April, the Admiralstab (Admiralty Staff) determined that ships of II Squadron should be periodically sent to guard the Danish straits. Hessen performed this duty from 10 to 20 April, when she was replaced by Preussen. Hessen returned to the North Sea, and was present for another attack on the British coast on 24–25 April. This time, the battlecruisers bombarded Yarmouth and Lowestoft. During this operation, the battlecruiser Seydlitz was damaged by a British mine and had to return to port prematurely. Visibility was poor, so the operation was quickly called off before the British fleet could intervene and inflict further losses. Hessen relieved Preussen in the straits on 4 May, remaining there until the 20th. She returned to the rest of the squadron at Altenbruch on 23 May to begin preparing for the next major fleet operation.
#### Battle of Jutland
Hessen took part in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916. Hessen and the five ships of the Deutschland class formed II Battle Squadron, under the command of Konteradmiral (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Franz Mauve. On 31 May, at 02:00 CET, VAdm Franz von Hipper's battlecruisers of I Scouting Group steamed out towards the Skagerrak, followed by the rest of the High Seas Fleet an hour and a half later. During the "Run to the North", Scheer ordered the fleet to pursue the British V Battle Squadron at top speed. The slower Deutschland-class ships quickly fell behind the faster dreadnoughts. By 19:30, the Grand Fleet had arrived on the scene, confronting Scheer with significant numerical superiority. The German fleet was severely hampered by the presence of the slower Deutschland-class ships; ordering an immediate turn towards Germany would have sacrificed the slower ships.
Scheer decided to reverse the course of the fleet with the Gefechtskehrtwendung, a maneuver that required every unit in the German line to turn 180° simultaneously. The six ships of II Battle Squadron, having fallen behind, could not conform to the new course following the turn, and fell back to the disengaged side of the German line. Mauve considered moving his ships to the rear of the line, astern of III Battle Squadron dreadnoughts, but decided against it when he realized the movement would interfere with the maneuvering of Hipper's battlecruisers. Instead, he attempted to place his ships at the head of the line.
Late in the day, Hessen and the Deutschland-class ships performed a vital blocking action that covered the withdrawal of the German battlecruisers. Vice Admiral David Beatty's battlecruisers had attacked the German ships in the darkness, which had turned westward to evade their attackers, and Mauve had continued in a southerly course, which placed his ships between the British and German battlecruisers. The British battlecruisers turned their attention to the pre-dreadnoughts, which in turn altered their course to the southwest in order to bring all of their guns to bear on the British ships. In the darkness, only muzzle flashes from the British ships could be seen; as a result Hessen and the other II Squadron ships held their fire.
At approximately 03:00 on 1 June, a group of British destroyers launched a torpedo attack against the German battle line. At 03:07, Hessen narrowly avoided a torpedo, but directly ahead, Pommern was struck by at least one at 03:10. The torpedo is believed to have detonated one of the ship's 17 cm (6.7 in) shell magazines, destroying the ship. Aboard Hessen, it was assumed that a submarine had destroyed Pommern; at 03:12 Hessen fired her main battery at an imagined submarine. She and several other battleships engaged imaginary submarines again at 05:06, and again at 05:13. Gunfire from Hessen and Hannover during the latter incident nearly hit the light cruisers Stettin and München; Scheer ordered them to cease fire. At 06:55, Hessen and Schlesien mistook a mine buoy dropped by the battleship Kaiser for a periscope and attacked it. In the course of the battle, Hessen had fired five 28 cm rounds, thirty-four 17 cm shells, and twenty-four 8.8 cm rounds. She was not damaged in the engagement.
#### Later operations
The experience at Jutland proved that the pre-dreadnoughts of II Squadron were a hindrance to the more modern units of the fleet, and so the Admiralstab decided that the ships should be withdrawn from service, as their crews could be used more effectively elsewhere. Hessen spent the remainder of 1916 alternating between guard duty off Altenbruch and the Danish straits. On 18 November, she went to Krautsand to assist the dreadnought König Albert, which had run aground there. Starting in December, Hessen was employed as a target ship in the Baltic; this was to be her last active service during the war. On 12 December, she was decommissioned and disarmed, after eleven years of service with the fleet.
Hessen was thereafter used as a depot ship in Brunsbüttel for I Submarine Flotilla, along with the old coastal defense ship Beowulf. While in reserve at Brunsbüttel, Hessen was jokingly referred to as SMS "Kleinste Fahrt" (SMS "Shortest Voyage") because of a warning that had been painted on the ship's hull. The ship's four 28 cm guns were re-mounted as railroad guns and employed on the Western Front. The Australian Army captured one of the guns on 8 August 1918; it is preserved as the Amiens Gun at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Australia.
### Reichsmarine and Kriegsmarine
Following the German defeat in World War I, the German navy was reorganized as the Reichsmarine according to the Treaty of Versailles. The new navy was permitted to retain eight pre-dreadnought battleships under Article 181—two of which would be in reserve—for coastal defense. Hessen was among the battleships retained, initially as one of the vessels in reserve. After being refitted, rearmed, and slightly modernized, Hessen returned to service with the Reichsmarine on 5 January 1925. She received her old gun armament back, with the exception her tertiary battery; she received only four of the 8.8 cm guns, with another four in high-angle anti-aircraft mounts. Four torpedo tubes were installed in above-water casemates in the main deck. Her coal-fired cylindrical boilers were replaced with a pair of new oil-fired models. After spending the first half of the year conducting sea trials and individual training, Hessen joined the fleet for a voyage to Norway in June, reminiscent of the old peacetime summer cruises of the Imperial fleet. Fleet training exercises followed later in the year.
At the start of 1926, Hessen was tasked with clearing paths for merchant vessels in the iced-over Baltic. She also made visits to the ports of Libau, Latvia, and Reval, Estonia, during this period. The ship joined the pre-dreadnought Schleswig-Holstein, the flagship of VAdm Konrad Mommsen, for a trip to Spain that lasted from 12 May to 19 June. During the cruise, Hessen visited the Canary Islands and Cape Verde in the central Atlantic. In July, Hessen and the torpedo boat T190 visited Neufahrwasser; they were the first German warships to visit Danzig since Germany lost control of the city to Poland after the war. The next two years passed uneventfully, and in July 1928, Hessen visited Norway with Admiral Hans Zenker, the chief of the Reichsmarine, aboard. Another cruise to Spain took place from 18 April to 9 May 1929, with VAdm Iwan Oldekop flying his flag aboard Schleswig-Holstein. Hessen visited Caramiñal, Vilagarcía, and Ferrol, Spain, during the trip. Hessen steamed to Stockholm, Sweden, on 30 August, remaining there until 5 September.
A major fleet training cruise to the Mediterranean Sea took place in 1930, lasting from 3 April to 16 June. During the tour, Hessen stopped in numerous ports, including Vigo, Alicante and Cadiz in Spain, Palermo and Syracuse in Sicily, and Venice, Italy. Following the fleet training exercises in August and September that year, she visited Kristiansand, Norway. The fleet visited Świnoujście, Poland, on 18 and 19 April 1931 before returning to Hamburg. She cruised off Norway from 15 June to 3 July. At some point in 1931, Hessen had two of her 17 cm guns and all four of the low-angle 8.8 cm guns removed. The following year, she visited Gotland, Oslo, and Danzig, and in 1933 she made another trip to Reval. Hessen paid a visit to Bergen and Sognefjord, Norway, in July 1934 before participating in what would be her final annual fleet maneuvers later that year. She departed Kiel on 25 September and steamed to Wilhelmshaven, where she was decommissioned on 12 November. Her crew were sent to the new armored ship Admiral Scheer, which replaced Hessen in the fleet.
On 31 March 1935, Hessen was struck from the naval register and converted into a target ship. Her armament was removed, the hull was lengthened, and new machinery was installed. The longer hull allowed room for two additional watertight compartments, which brought the number up to 15 from the original 13. The ship's superstructure was cut down nearly entirely; Hessen retained only a single funnel, a tower foremast, and the two armored barbettes for the main battery turrets. Her reciprocating machinery was replaced with steam turbines. The ship had a crew of 80, but could be operated by remote control when being used as a target. The work lasted from 11 April 1935 to 1 April 1937; beginning in April, she conducted sea trials, and on 12 July she was formally assigned to the gunnery training unit, in what had previously been renamed the Kriegsmarine. The first ship to use Hessen as a target was the light cruiser Leipzig on 30 August that year.
Hessen served in this capacity through World War II. On 31 March 1940, Hessen acted as an icebreaker for the auxiliary cruisers Atlantis, Widder, and Orion, on their trip from Kiel to the North Sea. She and her control ship, the ex-torpedo boat Blitz, were ceded to the Soviet Union on 2 January 1946 in Wilhelmshaven. She was recommissioned on 3 June 1946 as Tsel (with Blitz being renamed Wystrel), and continued to operate as a target ship until she was scrapped in 1960.
|
14,545,747 |
2001–02 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season
| 1,170,479,844 |
Cyclone season in the Southwest Indian Ocean
|
[
"2001–02 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season",
"2001–02 Southern Hemisphere tropical cyclone season",
"South-West Indian Ocean cyclone seasons",
"Tropical cyclones in 2001",
"Tropical cyclones in 2002"
] |
The 2001–02 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season had the earliest named storm since 1992. Many storms formed in the north-east portion of the basin, and several more originated around Australia. The basin is defined as the waters of the Indian Ocean west of longitude 90°E to the coast of Africa and south of the equator. Eleven tropical storms formed, compared to an average of nine. Tropical systems were present during 73 days, which was significantly higher than the average of 58 for this basin.
Tropical cyclones in this basin are monitored by the Regional Specialized Meteorological Center (RSMC) in Réunion. The season started on November 1, 2001, and ended on April 30, 2002; for Mauritius and the Seychelles, the season continued until May 15. These dates conventionally delimit the period of each year when most tropical cyclones form in the basin; however, storms formed both before and after the designated season. The first storm was Andre, which emerged from the Australian basin as Tropical Cyclone Alex in late October. The strongest storm, Cyclone Hary, was the first very intense tropical cyclone since 2000; it hit Madagascar, where it caused lighter damage than expected but three deaths. In January, Cyclone Dina left heavy damage in the Mascarene Islands, particularly on Réunion, where it dropped 2,102 mm (82.8 in) of rainfall. The second-to-last storm was Cyclone Kesiny, which killed 33 people when it struck Madagascar in the midst of a political crisis.
## Season summary
Météo-France's meteorological office in Réunion (MFR) is the official Regional Specialized Meteorological Center for the South-West Indian Ocean, tracking all tropical cyclones from the east coast of Africa to 90° E. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC), which is a joint United States Navy – United States Air Force task force that issues tropical cyclone warnings for the region, also issued advisories for storms during the season. Following the season, the start of the tropical cyclone year was changed to July 1, which defines the boundary between tropical cyclone seasons.
Although the previous season was tame, the 2001–02 season was very active and featured several intense tropical cyclones. During the season, eleven systems were named, which was slightly above the average of nine. However, nine of the systems attained cyclone intensity, the second highest total in 30 years. In terms of both the number of systems and number of "cyclone days", the season was considered comparable by MFR to the 1993–94 season. In this season, there were 73 days on which tropical cyclones were active, which was more than twice as much as the previous season and 19 days above the average. A system of cyclone intensity was active on 35 days, which was 15 days above the mean. Additionally, five of the systems attained "intense tropical cyclone" status, including one – Hary – that attained the "very intense tropical cyclone" stage. Activity was relatively distributed throughout the season and had the earliest start since 1992. Like most seasons within the basin, activity reached a climax in late January. Several systems during the season developed in the eastern portion of the basin, similar to 1993–94; unlike that season, many storms in 2001–02 stayed at sea throughout their lifetime, thus reducing casualties and damage.
## Systems
### Severe Tropical Storm Alex–Andre
The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) classified a tropical low as Tropical Cyclone Alex on October 26 in the Australian region. It was initially located in an area of strong wind shear, which prevented significant strengthening. However, convection over the system increased on October 27, and it crossed into the South-West Indian Ocean at around the same time. It was renamed Andre, becoming the earliest date for the first named storm since 1992. After reaching 10‐minute sustained winds of 100 km/h (62 mph), according to the MFR, Andre began slowly weakening, due to increasing shear. It moved generally to the west-southwest before turning northwestward on October 29, around which time the convection separated from the center. Moving slowly, Andre later turned to the southwest after weakening to a tropical depression. Late on October 31, the system was no longer classifiable as a tropical system, and the remnants continued to the west-southwest until being absorbed by a trough on November 8.
### Tropical Cyclone Bessi–Bako
The monsoon trough spawned a tropical low on November 24 in the Australian basin. It moved to the southwest, strengthening into Tropical Cyclone Bessi on November 27. Two days later, it moved into the South-West Indian Ocean, and was renamed Bako on December 1. Located in a similar position to the previous storm, Bako strengthened into a severe tropical storm on December 1, aided by warm waters and slack wind shear. The storm turned to the southeast on December 2, despite predictions to the contrary, and later that day it intensified further into a tropical cyclone, the first of the season. However, on December 3, Bako weakened back into a severe tropical storm due to much cooler sea surface temperatures and increasing northwesterly wind shear. It weakened into a tropical depression on December 5, before transitioning into an extratropical cyclone the same day. RSMC La Reunion continued to track the remnants of Bako until December 9.
### Severe Tropical Storm Cyprien
On December 25, a cold front dragged over the central Mozambique Channel. A weak circulation formed in the Channel and moderate convection appeared on December 27. Then on December 30, RSMC La Reunion designated this low pressure as a zone of disturbed weather and was classified as a tropical depression on January 1, 2002. The JTWC also issued a Tropical Cyclone Formation Alert (TCFA) early on December 31 and designated it as Tropical Cyclone 08S the next day. As it moved further eastwards it strengthened quickly from a tropical depression into a severe tropical storm, with the Meteorological Services of Madagascar giving it the name Cyprien on January 1. Cyprien soon became a serious threat to western Madagascar. Convection began to dissipate as wind shear increased and that resulted in quick weakening to a tropical depression. As it made landfall on western Madagascar, it dropped heavy rainfall. In all, Cyprien destroyed 841 homes in the towns of Morombe and Morondava. Damage in the towns was estimated at \$180,000, but there were no deaths.
### Intense Tropical Cyclone Dina
Cyclone Dina originated in a tropical disturbance first noted on January 15 near the Chagos Archipelago. By January 17, the system had developed enough organized convection as it moved southwestward to be declared a tropical depression. Rapid intensification occurred shortly thereafter, with the system attaining winds in excess of 120 km/h (75 mph) on January 18. Dina peaked in intensity on January 20 as an intense tropical cyclone with winds of 210 km/h (130 mph). Hours later, the storm bypassed Rodrigues Island about 150 km (93 mi) to its north. On January 21, the storm brushed Mauritius and Réunion as an intense tropical cyclone before turning southward. Once on a southward course, steady weakening ensued and the system eventually transitioned into an extratropical cyclone on January 25. The remnants of the storm accelerated southeastward and were absorbed into a polar trough on January 28.
Across Mauritius and Réunion, torrential rains and destructive winds from the cyclone resulted in extensive to "catastrophic" damage. The entire island of Mauritius lost power during the storm and widespread structural damage took place. Agricultural and property damage amounted to US\$47 million and US\$50 million respectively in the republic. Nine fatalities were attributed to the storm in Mauritius: five off the coast of Rodrigues Island and four on the main island. More extensive damage was seen on Réunion where up to 2,102 mm (82.8 in) of rain fell over three days. Flooding destroyed many homes, washed out roads, and caused catastrophic agricultural damage. Destructive winds, measured at up to 280 km/h (170 mph), also crippled communications. In all, six people died on the island and losses were estimated at €200 million (US\$190 million).
### Tropical Cyclone Eddy
A system developed within a convergence zone on January 20 near the boundary between the South-West Indian Ocean and the Australia region. Its circulation became better defined, and MFR initiated advisories on January 22. With a ridge to the south, it drifted to the southeast, approaching 90°E, but turning to the southwest before crossing over. On January 23, the system intensified into a tropical depression. Slowly intensifying, the depression became Tropical Storm Eddy on January 24. That day, the JTWC initiated advisories on Tropical Cyclone 11S, and it turned toward the south. After having experienced moderate wind shear, Eddy entered an area of more favorable conditions, and its convection gradually organized. Early on January 26, MFR upgraded it to a tropical cyclone, later estimating peak winds of 130 km/h (81 mph). After that time, increasing wind shear weakened Eddy to a tropical storm, causing it to curve to the west. By January 28, the circulation was exposed from the convection, and Eddy weakened to a tropical depression. It turned to the southwest the next day, and dissipated fully on January 30.
### Intense Tropical Cyclone Francesca
The origins of Francesca were from a tropical low that formed in the Australia region on January 28, east of the Cocos Islands. This was near the same place that Eddy had formed a week prior. The system that became Francesca moved west-southwestward due to a ridge to the south. On January 30 it crossed into the South-West Indian Ocean, where wind shear prevented significant development. On January 31, the system intensified into a tropical depression, and late the next day the JTWC classified it as Tropical Cyclone 12S. Wind shear diminished on February 2, which allowed the depression to strengthen into Tropical Storm Francesca after convection increased. It continued to intensify steadily, becoming a tropical cyclone on February 3. The next day, the JTWC upgraded Francesca to the equivalent of a minimal hurricane.
An approaching trough turned the cyclone to the southeast, and Francesca quickly developed a well-defined eye. It rapidly strengthened into an intense tropical cyclone, and reached peak winds of 185 km/h (115 mph) on February 4, according to MFR. The JTWC estimated peak 1‐minute winds of 215 km/h (134 mph) when the storm was located about 1,065 km (662 mi) southeast of Diego Garcia. Shortly after peaking, Francesca began weakening, losing its eye, until being a minimal tropical cyclone on February 7. That day, it re-intensified slightly and redeveloped an eye, although it was short-lived. Increasing shear again weakened Francesca, and on February 9 the cyclone deteriorated to a tropical storm. Cooler waters caused further weakening, which diminished convection over the center. On February 11, Francesca became extratropical, and the remnants turned to the southwest, dissipating on February 14.
### Intense Tropical Cyclone Guillaume
On February 13, several low-pressure areas were located over east-central Madagascar, with an area of convection that extended northwestward across the country toward Comoros. The system dropped heavy rainfall, reaching 250 mm (9.8 in) in Tamatave in a 12‐hour period. In Mamoudzou, the capital of Mayotte, rainfall reached 195 mm (7.7 in) in 24 hours, which caused some damage on the island including a bridge collapse. A developing center gradually became better organized, and it took an unusual track offshore toward the northeast, steered by a ridge over Madagascar. On February 14, MFR classified the system as a zone of disturbed weather, upgrading it to a tropical disturbance the next day. Late on February 15, the JTWC initiated advisories on Tropical Cyclone 15S, and early the next day MFR upgraded it to Tropical Depression 10. Shortly thereafter, the Meteorological Services of Madagascar upgraded the system to Tropical Storm Guillame.
Late on February 16, Guillame began developing a small eye, turning to the east around the same time. With favorable conditions, including good outflow, the system quickly intensified into a compact tropical cyclone as it turned to the southeast. Strengthening briefly stopped on February 17, possible due to an eyewall replacement cycle, although it resumed the following day. Guillame curved to the south and southwest, reaching peak winds of 195 km/h (121 mph) late on February 18; this made it an intense tropical cyclone. The next day, the cyclone passed about 150 km (93 mi) east of Mauritius before an approaching trough turned it to the southeast. Despite the storm's proximity to the island, effects there were modest, marked by winds of 78 km/h (48 mph) and 71 mm (2.8 in) of rain. The cyclone began weakening due to increased wind shear, and deteriorated below tropical cyclone status on February 21. A strengthening ridge turned Guillame toward the northwest, and the storm dissipated on February 23.
### Very Intense Tropical Cyclone Hary
Cyclone Hary was the strongest tropical cyclone of the season. Developing on March 5 from the monsoon trough, the storm initially moved generally to the west and gradually intensified. With favorable conditions, Hary quickly intensified on March 7, developing an eye and well-defined outflow. After reaching an initial peak, the cyclone briefly weakened due to an eyewall replacement cycle, by which time the storm turned southwestward toward Madagascar. Hary re-intensified and attained peak winds of 220 km/h (140 mph) on March 10 just offshore of eastern Madagascar, which made it the first very intense tropical cyclone since 2000.
After peaking, Hary weakened due to land interaction, and it struck Madagascar southeast of Antalaha. After turning south over land, Cyclone Hary quickly moved offshore. There were three deaths in the country, one of which was from electrocution. There was locally heavy crop damage, and four bridges were destroyed. However, the damage was considered minimal, given the intensity of the storm. After affecting Madagascar, Hary accelerated to the southeast, and the eastern periphery of the circulation moved over Réunion. On the mountain peaks of the island, rainfall reached 1,344 mm (52.9 in), although it was much less near the coast. The rainfall caused flooding, killing one person, and 20,000 people were left without power. Hary became extratropical on March 13, although its remnants continued for several days as a powerful mid-latitude storm.
### Intense Tropical Cyclone Ikala
On March 21, a tropical disturbance quickly developed in the monsoon trough in the south-central Indian Ocean, about 1,250 km (780 mi) east of Diego Garcia. A ridge to the south steered the system to the west-southwest, and moderate wind shear in the region prevented significant strengthening. The convection slowly organized, and the depression intensified into Tropical Storm Ikala early on March 25. By that time, the shear had decreased, although initially it was strong enough to prevent the convection from covering the center. An approaching cold front turned the storm to the southeast on March 25, where upper-level conditions became more favorable for strengthening. Thunderstorms increased over the center, and an eye began developing on March 26. The next day, Ikala intensified into a tropical cyclone, reaching peak winds of 165 km/h (103 mph) according to MFR; the JTWC estimated peak 1‐minute winds of 205 km/h (127 mph). Shortly after peaking, increased wind shear and drier air from the front quickly weakened Ikala, and it deteriorated below tropical cyclone status on March 28. That day, the center became exposed from the convection, and on March 29 Ikala became extratropical. The remnants turned to the southwest before recurving to the southeast on March 31, and Ikala was absorbed by a cold front on April 3.
### Tropical Cyclone Dianne–Jery
In early April, the monsoon trough spawned a tropical depression early on April 7 to the northeast of the Cocos Islands in the Australian basin. It moved to the southwest due to a ridge along the west coast of Australia, and quickly intensified into Tropical Cyclone Dianne. Favorable conditions allowed for continued strengthening, and the storm developed a small eye late on April 7. The next day, the storm entered into South-West Indian Ocean and was renamed Jery. Shortly thereafter it intensified into a tropical cyclone, although by that time, the conditions were no longer as favorable for rapid intensification. On April 9, MFR estimated peak 10‐minute winds of 150 km/h (93 mph); around the same time, the JTWC estimated peak 1‐minute winds of 195 km/h (121 mph).
While at peak intensity, Jery began turning to the south, due to reaching the western edge of a ridge. An approaching trough increased wind shear over the storm, causing the convection to diminish and expose the center. Late on April 10 it weakened below tropical cyclone status, and the next day Jery became extratropical. Shortly thereafter the remnants crossed into the Australian region, dissipating on April 13.
### Tropical Cyclone Kesiny
Cyclone Kesiny was the final named storm of the season, forming near the equator on May 2, within a trough enhanced by a pulse of the Madden–Julian oscillation that sparked three other storms. Kesiny initially moved to the southeast, but later turned to the southwest due to a strengthening ridge. On May 6, it intensified into a tropical cyclone, but later weakened and was not expected to re-strengthen. However, Kesiny developed an eye and re-intensified into a tropical cyclone on May 9, reaching peak winds of 130 km/h (81 mph) before striking Madagascar about 60 km (37 mi) southeast of Antsiranana. This made it the first recorded tropical cyclone to make landfall in the month of May in the basin. It weakened while crossing the country, and after turning to the south it struck the country again before dissipating on May 11.
Across Madagascar, Cyclone Kesiny dropped heavy rainfall, reaching 891 mm (35.1 in) in three days at Toamasina (the second largest city in the country). The rains caused mudslides and flooding in the eastern portion of the country, wrecking the rice and maize crops and leaving 5,000 people homeless. At least 33 bridges were destroyed, and many roads were damaged. A total of 33 people were killed, and 1,200 people were injured. The cyclone struck in the midst of a political crisis, in which the top two candidates of the Malagasy presidential election in 2001 declared themselves the winner; the incumbent, who lost, attempted to declare Toamasina the new capital city, and the political instability disrupted relief efforts.
### Other systems
The first storm of the season originated from an area of convection east of Diego Garcia in early October 2001. Moving southwestward, it slowly organized, with convection developing around a weak circulation. Late on October 3, MFR classified the system as a zone of disturbed weather. On October 5, the agency re-classified it as a tropical disturbance and later as Tropical Depression 1. The circulation was partially exposed due to wind shear, although it had good outflow. The JTWC initiated advisories on Tropical Cyclone 01S at 0600 UTC on October 6, estimating winds of about 65 km/h (40 mph). Due to the shear, the convection gradually diminished, prompting the MFR to downgrade it to a tropical disturbance on October 7. The next day, the JTWC issued its last advisory, noting that the system was dissipating.
A zone of disturbed weather formed on November 15 in the eastern part of the basin. It remained a zone of disturbed weather for a few days before briefly strengthening into a tropical depression on November 21. It dissipated two days later. This system was also designated as tropical cyclone by the JTWC.
On February 5, a tropical low developed in the Mozambique Channel. Classified as Tropical Disturbance 9 by MFR, the system moved southeastward, dissipating on February 6. The season ended with a tropical disturbance, which formed on June 13 to the east-southeast of Diego Garcia. It moved to the south, and was last monitored on June 15.
## Storm names
A tropical disturbance is named when it reaches moderate tropical storm strength. If a tropical disturbance reaches moderate tropical storm status west of 55°E, then the Sub-regional Tropical Cyclone Advisory Centre in Madagascar assigns the appropriate name to the storm; between 55°E and 90°E, the Sub-regional Tropical Cyclone Advisory Centre in Mauritius is responsible for the same task. A new annual list is used every year so no names are retired.
## Season effects
This table lists all of the tropical cyclones and subtropical cyclones that were monitored during the 2001–2002 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season. Information on their intensity, duration, name, and areas affected, primarily comes from RSMC La Reunion. Death and damage reports come from either press reports or the relevant national disaster management agency while the damage totals are given in 2002 USD.
\|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| None \|\| None \|\| None \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| None \|\| None \|\| None \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| None \|\| None \|\| None \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| None \|\| None \|\| None \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| Madagascar \|\| \|\| None \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| Mauritius, Réunion \|\| \|\| \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| None \|\| None \|\| None \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| None \|\| None \|\| None \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| None \|\| None \|\| None \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| Madagascar, Comoros
Mauritius, Réunion \|\| Unknown \|\| None \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion \|\| Unknown \|\| \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| None \|\| None \|\| None \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| None \|\| None \|\| None \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| Madagascar \|\| Unknown \|\| \|\| \|- \| \|\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| bgcolor=#\| \|\| None \|\| None \|\| None \|\| \|-
## See also
- List of Southern Hemisphere tropical cyclone seasons
- Tropical cyclones in 2001, 2002
- Atlantic hurricane seasons: 2001 and 2002
- Pacific hurricane seasons: 2001, 2002
- Pacific typhoon seasons: 2001, 2002
- North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons: 2001, 2002
|
28,236,517 |
Durrell's vontsira
| 1,171,414,460 |
Small species of carnivoran from Madagascar
|
[
"Carnivorans of Africa",
"Euplerids",
"Gerald Durrell",
"Mammals described in 2010",
"Mammals of Madagascar",
"Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN"
] |
Durrell's vontsira (Salanoia durrelli) is a small, reddish-brown, fox-like mammal native to the island of Madagascar. Discovered in 2004, it lives only in the biodiverse wetlands of Lake Alaotra. Durrell's vontsira belongs to the family Eupleridae, a group of meat-eating, cat- or fox-like mammals (of the order Carnivora) found only on Madagascar. The species is closely related to the brown-tailed mongoose (Salanoia concolor), with which it forms the genus Salanoia. The two are genetically similar, but morphologically distinct, and S. durrelli was described as a new species in 2010.
A small, reddish-brown carnivore, Salanoia durrelli is characterized by broad feet with prominent pads, reddish-buff underparts, and broad, robust teeth, among other differences from the brown-tailed mongoose. In the only two weighed specimens, body mass was 600 and 675 g (21.2 and 23.8 oz). It is a marsh-dwelling animal that may feed on crustaceans and mollusks. The Lake Alaotra area is a threatened ecosystem, and S. durrelli may also be endangered by competition with introduced species.
## Taxonomy
An individual Salanoia durrelli was observed swimming in 2004 by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust (DWCT) during a survey of bamboo lemurs (Hapalemur) in the Lac Alaotra area, the largest wetlands of Madagascar. The animal was captured, photographed, and then released, but examination of the photograph showed that it could not be identified with any known species of Malagasy carnivoran (family Eupleridae). Therefore, two specimens were caught in 2005 by the DWCT. One was killed to facilitate additional morphological comparisons. In 2010, it was formally described as Salanoia durrelli in a paper by conservationist Joanna Durbin and a team of scientists from the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance, Nature Heritage, the Natural History Museum, Conservation International, and the DWCT. The specific name, durrelli, honors Gerald Durrell, a noted conservationist and the founder of the DWCT. The common name vontsira is a Malagasy name for various species within Galidiinae.
Previously, local villagers had already reported the presence of a small carnivoran at Alaotra, and it was speculated that the animal was the closely related brown-tailed mongoose (Salanoia concolor) of eastern Madagascar. Salanoia durrelli was placed in the genus Salanoia, which previously included only the brown-tailed mongoose. S. durrelli shows substantial morphological differences from the brown-tailed mongoose, but the mitochondrial DNA of the two species is very similar. The discoverers chose to recognize the Lac Alaotra population as a separate species in view of its significant morphological differentiation. The observed morphological distinctiveness might be the result of adaptations to life in the Alaotra wetlands, similar to the Alaotra bamboo lemur species, Hapalemur alaotrensis, which is also recognized as a distinct species despite being genetically close to the more widespread Hapalemur griseus.
## Description
Salanoia durrelli most closely resembles the brown-tailed mongoose, which is a small, gracile mongoose-like carnivoran. It is reddish-brown overall, paler than the brown-tailed mongoose. The head and nape are speckled. The underparts are reddish-buff, not brownish as in the brown-tailed mongoose. Most of the tail is similar in color to the body, but the tip is yellowish-brown. The inner side of the well-furred external ear (pinna) is reddish-buff. The broad feet are naked below, with the naked skin buff on the forefeet and dark brown on the hindfeet, and show prominent pads. Each of the five digits on the fore- and hindfeet bears a long, dark brown claw. There are rows of stiff hairs along the outer margins of the feet. In contrast, the brown-tailed mongoose has narrower feet with more poorly developed pads. In S. durrelli, the fur is long and soft.
In the holotype specimen, a female, the head and body length was 310 mm (12 in), the tail length was 210 mm (8.3 in), the hindfoot length was 66.8 mm (2.63 in), the ear length was 17.5 mm (0.69 in), and the body mass was 675 g (23.8 oz). In another specimen, a male which was captured and released, the head and body length was about 330 mm (13 in), the tail length was about 175 mm (6.9 in), and the body mass was 600 g (21 oz). Based on these limited data, S. durrelli may be slightly smaller than the brown-tailed mongoose.
The skull generally resembles that of the brown-tailed mongoose, but the rostrum (front part) is broad and deep, the nasal bones are broad and short, and the region of the palate is broad. The mandible (lower jaw) is robust and shows a high, steeply rising coronoid process (a projection at the back of the bone). Statistical analysis of measurements of the skulls and teeth strongly separates S. durrelli from specimens of the brown-tailed mongoose.
Salanoia durrelli has a more robust dentition than the brown-tailed mongoose; the teeth have larger surface areas. The first and second upper incisors are smaller than the third, which is separated by a pronounced diastema (gap) from the canine tooth. The canine is more robust than in the brown-tailed mongoose. The first upper premolar is small, but the second and third are larger; these two teeth are shorter and broader than in the brown-tailed mongoose. The fourth premolar is large, as is the first molar. The second upper molar is less than one-third the size of the first, and is more highly reduced than that of the brown-tailed mongoose, which is about two-thirds the size of the first molar. The first lower incisor is smaller than the other two. The lower canine, premolars, and first molar are well-developed. The second molar is broad, but smaller than in the brown-tailed mongoose.
## Distribution, habitat, and behavior
Salanoia durrelli has been recorded at Andreba, a marshy area at 750 m (2,460 ft) above sea level on the eastern coast of Lac Alaotra. The nearest occurrence of the brown-tailed mongoose is about 55 km (34 mi) from Alaotra. The first observed specimen was swimming; it may have fled from human activity on the shore. The two others were caught on mats of floating vegetation. Thus, S. durrelli occurs in a marsh habitat—quite different from the forest-dwelling brown-tailed mongoose. S. durrelli may use its robust dentition to feed on prey with hard parts, such as crustaceans and molluscs, in addition to small vertebrates, rather than insects, which the more gracile-toothed brown-tailed mongoose eats. Indeed, the two specimens of S. durrelli were captured using traps baited with fish and meat. S. durrelli is similar in many respects to the larger mainland African marsh mongoose (Atilax paludinosa), a carnivorous wetland-dweller that also uses mats of vegetation to eat and sleep on.
## Conservation status
The unique habitat of Lac Alaotra is threatened by pollution, destruction of marshes for the construction of rice fields, overfishing, and introduced species such as exotic fish, plants, the black rat (Rattus rattus), and the small Indian civet (Viverricula indica), another small carnivoran. A bird restricted to the area, the Alaotra grebe (Tachybaptus rufolavatus), was declared extinct in 2010 and the population of the bamboo lemur fell by about 30% from 1994 to 1999. As a narrowly distributed species with a small population, S. durrelli is likely to be threatened by degradation of its habitat and perhaps competition with the small Indian civet and the black rat, but its conservation status has not yet been formally assessed. The DWCT is working to conserve the Lac Alaotra area and the region has been designated as a protected area.
|
41,522,101 |
Valley View (Romney, West Virginia)
| 1,084,483,630 |
1855 Greek Revival residence and associated farm
|
[
"1855 establishments in Virginia",
"Buildings and structures in Romney, West Virginia",
"Farms on the National Register of Historic Places in West Virginia",
"Greek Revival houses in West Virginia",
"Houses completed in 1855",
"Houses in Hampshire County, West Virginia",
"Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in West Virginia",
"National Register of Historic Places in Hampshire County, West Virginia",
"Parsons family of West Virginia",
"Plantation houses in West Virginia",
"South Branch Valley Railroad"
] |
Valley View is a mid-19th-century Greek Revival residence and farm overlooking the South Branch Potomac River northwest of Romney, West Virginia. The house is atop a promontory where Depot Valley joins the South Branch Potomac River valley.
The Valley View property was part of the South Branch Survey of the Northern Neck Proprietary, a large tract that was inherited by Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, in 1719. It was settled by John Collins and his family in 1749, and acquired by the Parsons family before 1772. The Valley View house was built by James Parsons Jr. in 1855. After the Civil War, Parsons' widow sold the farm to Charles Harmison. His wife, Elizabeth Harmison, inspired by her childhood Virginia home, Western View, and the scenic South Branch Potomac River views, named the farm Valley View. The most recent of a series of owners, the Mayhew family, bought the property in 1979. Valley View's current proprietors, Robert and Kim Mayhew, have restored the historic residence and grounds.
The house at Valley View is a two-story brick structure with a rectangular architectural plan. The front entrance is covered by a small portico, topped with a pediment supported by wooden Doric columns. The rear of the house, with a two-story wood porch stretching across it, faces the South Branch Potomac River valley and Mill Creek Mountain. Each of the original eight large rooms of the 1855 structure contains a fireplace framed by a wooden mantelpiece with classical elements. The original windows, wooden trim, and materials in the main section of the house are intact. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012 as a locally significant example of Greek Revival architecture.
## Geography and setting
The Valley View house is about 1 mile (1.6 km) northwest of downtown Romney, atop a promontory (known locally as the Yellow Banks) where Depot Valley joins the South Branch Potomac River valley. Depot Valley runs 0.5 miles (0.8 km) from West Sioux Lane in Romney to Valley View, and an unnamed tributary of Big Run flows north along its bottom. Depot Valley Road parallels the stream.
Depot Valley is named for Romney Depot, located at the end of a former spur of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) South Branch line near the intersection of present-day West Sioux Lane and Depot Valley Road. The unincorporated area around the depot was once known as Valley. A post office operated there from 1928 until 1937, when its mail was routed through Romney; it is assumed that Valley View farm used it, since it was 0.5 miles (0.8 km) south of the house.
The Valley View farm property adjoins the Wappocomo farm on the northeast, the corporate limits of Romney on the east and south and the Yellow Banks on the west. As well as Valley View's 6.63-acre (2.68 ha) tract, the Mayhew family owns agricultural land rich in alluvial soils along the South Branch Potomac River west of the house. The South Branch Valley Railroad bisects this farmland, crossing the South Branch Potomac River via a wooden trestle.
Valley View Island, an island in the South Branch Potomac River just north of the mouth of Sulphur Spring Run, is approximately 0.5 miles (0.8 km) southwest of the Valley View house. Both the house and the island are owned by the Mayhew family. The island is ringed by forests, with agricultural fields in its center. When Lots Number 17 and 19 of the Northern Neck Proprietary South Branch Survey were surveyed in 1749 and resurveyed in 1788, the island belonged to Lot Number 19. At that time, the river flowed east of the island, along the base of the Yellow Banks; its course later changed to run around the west side of the island.
Mill Creek Mountain, a narrow anticlinal mountain ridge, rises westward from the South Branch Potomac River across from Valley View. The western foothills of South Branch Mountain rise to the east. Both mountains are covered with Appalachian – Blue Ridge forests of hardwoods and pine.
## History
### Royal land grant and Collins family ownership
The land upon which Valley View is located was originally part of the Northern Neck Proprietary, a land grant that the exiled Charles II awarded to seven of his supporters in 1649 during the English Interregnum. Following the Restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, he renewed the Northern Neck Proprietary grant in 1662, revised it in 1669, and again renewed the original grant favoring the original grantees Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper and Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington in 1672. In 1681, Bennet sold his share to Lord Colepeper, and Lord Colepeper received a new charter for the entire land grant from James II in 1688.
Following the deaths of Lord Colepeper, his wife Margaret, and his daughter Katherine, the Northern Neck Proprietary passed to Katherine's son Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron in 1719, who selected a portion of it for his manor. This tract, known as the South Branch Survey of the proprietary, extended from the north end of the Trough to the junction of the North and South Branches of the Potomac River. In 1748, Fairfax commissioned James Genn to survey the South Branch Potomac River lowlands for sale and lease, with lots ranging in size from 300 to 400 acres (120 to 160 ha).
In 1749, the tract on which Valley View stands was purchased from Lord Fairfax by John Collins. The 425-acre (172 ha) lot was Lot Number 20 on the South Branch Survey. Collins also owned a large tract of land spanning present-day Hampshire and Hardy counties. His son Thomas Collins is thought to have inherited his father's landholdings as an "heir at law", since there is no record of a will by John Collins dispensing of his properties. By 1772, Thomas Collins acquired Lot Number 20, where he lived with his wife Elizabeth. In 1816, Collins was serving as a magistrate when the town of Romney held a Virginia state election for the Electoral College. One representative from each of Virginia's 25 counties traveled to Romney to cast his vote. Collins and county commissioner William Donaldson certified the convention's election results.
In 1817, Thomas Collins sold Lot Number 20 to James Gregg Parsons. It is unknown whether the Collinses moved from the tract or continued living on it after the sale. Thomas Collins died in 1822, and Elizabeth Collins in 1823.
### Parsons family
The Parsons family members were among the first English settlers in the Thirteen Colonies in 1635; around 1740, they settled in Hampshire County. By 1778, Isaac Parsons (1752–1796), a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, owned 161 acres (65 ha) of Lot Number 16 and all of Lot Number 17 in the Proprietary. James Gregg Parsons, his eldest son, was born in Hampshire County in 1773. In 1795, he married Mary Catherine Casey (1773–1846), whose family owned the adjoining Lot Number 21. After their marriage, they lived in the main house at Wappocomo, which had been built by Mary Catherine's father Nicholas Casey. The couple inherited the house after Nicholas Casey's death in 1833.
James Gregg Parsons died on January 25, 1847, leaving most of his land to his three sons: James (Big Jim) Parsons Jr. (1798–1858), David C. Parsons (1803–1860), and Isaac Parsons (1814–1862). James, his eldest son, inherited Lot Number 20 (known as the Collins Tract); his second son David inherited Lot Number 13 south of Romney (on which Hickory Grove was later located); and his youngest son Isaac inherited Lot Number 21 (which included Wappocomo). His sons also inherited the nearby "Jake Sugar Rum Tract, the McGuire Tract, and five town lots in Romney". According to historian William K. Rice, by 1846 Parsons' sons and their families were all living on the tracts they would eventually inherit. Rice determined that James Parsons Jr. moved to the Collins Tract, around 1826, and was living there when his father died.
James Parsons Jr. was a farmer and cattleman who was born in Hampshire County. Parsons family genealogist Virginia Parsons MacCabe wrote the following description of James Parsons Jr. in her book Parsons' Family History and Record (1913): "He was square and honorable in business, and had a large circle of friends; he had the urbanity and the gentility of manner which characterizes the true gentleman". Parsons married Elizabeth Miller on January 8, 1829. The couple had eleven children, several of whom attended college.
In 1855, Parsons began building the present-day Valley View house on the Collins Tract. Although he wrote many letters to his sister Mary Gregg Parsons Stump about farming, cattle, family, health and community events, no letters are known to remain from the time of the house's construction. The Parsons family owned several slaves who are thought to have assisted with construction.
After living in his new house for three years, Big Jim died of tuberculosis on October 14, 1858. His widow, Elizabeth, lived in the house until after the Civil War. In 1867 or 1869, she sold the house, the Collins Tract and the remainder of Lot Number 20 to Charles Harmison (1823–1896) for \$8,500, moving with her remaining children to Missouri (where she died in 1883). The cost of building the house financially strained the Parsons family; historian Catherine Snider Long suggests that Elizabeth Miller Parsons sold the house as a result of further, war-related, financial stress from which the family could not recover.
### Harmison family
Charles Harmison was born in Franklin County, Illinois, to Nathaniel and Lydia Harmison, and married Bettie Ann Smith (1827–1903) on May 4, 1854, in Taylor County, West Virginia. Bettie, the daughter of C. C. and Martha W. Smith, was raised at Western View (their Fauquier County, Virginia, home). By 1867, Harmison and his family were living in Harrison County. His older brother had moved to Romney, where he established and operated the Virginia House hotel. In 1867, Charles Harmison's brother learned that the Parsons farm on the Collins Tract was for sale, and he advised Charles to buy it. Charles' wife, who wanted to live nearer to Virginia, also urged Charles to buy the property. Charles purchased the farm and he, his wife, their seven children, and a young African American boy named Snoden moved from Harrison County to Hampshire County in three days. They traveled on the Northwestern Turnpike in an ambulance Charles had bought after the war. Elizabeth Harmison named their new house and farm Valley View, which was influenced by the name of her childhood home, Western View, and the view of the South Branch Potomac River valley from their property.
Harmison prospered in Hampshire County, acquiring adjacent properties and enlarging his Valley View estate. He later gave his acquired lands to his children to establish their own homes when they married. His farm was further changed in 1884, when the B&O Railroad completed its South Branch line between the main B&O line at Green Spring and Romney Depot. The South Branch line bisected the small valley to the immediate east of the house, which became known as Depot Valley.
Charles Harmison died on October 31, 1896, after being thrown from a buggy. His son George Edward Harmison (1863–1916) inherited Valley View around 1903 and brought his wife, Carrie Belle Fox (1870–1953), there after their marriage on October 4, 1905. George demolished the old log kitchen at Valley View, replacing it with a contemporary one.
In June 1909, construction commenced on the Hampshire Southern Railroad between its northern terminus on the B&O Railroad's Romney Depot spur and the South Branch Potomac River within the bottomlands of George Harmison's farm. In October 1909, the first train on the Hampshire Southern line passed over Harmison's bottomlands and crossed the river on an unfinished trestle across the South Branch Potomac River. By 1910, the 18-mile (29 km) line from the Romney spur terminus at Valley View to McNeill was in operation. Later that year, freight and passenger service between Romney and Moorefield began, providing a direct rail link between Moorefield and the B&O Railroad main line at Green Spring. The Hampshire Southern Railroad Company operated this line until 1911, when it was purchased by the Moorefield and Virginia Railroad Company. Moorefield and Virginia transferred the rail line to the B&O Railroad Company in 1913, when it became part of the B&O's South Branch line.
In 1911, George Harmison subdivided the Valley View fields on the Yellow Banks overlooking the South Branch Potomac River. The new development, known as the Valley View Addition to Romney, was south of the Valley View house and west of Romney Depot. Twenty-one lots were sold at public auction on September 27, 1911, and several more were sold privately.
Harmison died in 1916, and Carrie continued to live at Valley View until her death on February 8, 1953. Harmison's nephew, Paul Cresap Harmison (1893–1972, a grandson of Charles Harmison's brother Jonathan Harmison), and his wife Nancy Parker Harmison (1896–1981) had moved to Valley View to live with her. After Carrie's death, Paul and Nancy Parker Harmison inherited the house and farm. Paul and Nancy's daughter Virginia Helen Harmison was married to Robert Esler in front of the fireplace in the home's living room on May 5, 1957. Valley View remained in the Harmison family until 1963, when it was sold to Philip Newell and his wife Martha.
### Mayhew family
During its changes in ownership, the original Lot Number 20 of the South Branch Survey was repeatedly partitioned and sold. By 1976, the original property was divided into five farms and other parcels, including the Valley View Addition. The Valley View residence lies on a 6.63-acre (2.68 ha) tract.
Valley View was purchased by Robert Mayhew's father and a business associate in 1979. Mayhew later bought the house from his father, and he and his wife Kim restored the residence and its grounds. In 1991, the Potomac Eagle Scenic Railroad began operating on the old B&O South Branch line, which bisects the bottomlands below Valley View.
After surveys of historic properties in the county, in 2008 the Hampshire County Historic Landmarks Commission and the Hampshire County Commission began an initiative to place structures and districts on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The county received funding from the State Historic Preservation Office of the West Virginia Division of Culture and History to survey and document the structure's architecture and history. As a result of this initiative, Valley View was one of the first eight historic properties to be considered for placement on the register. The other seven were Capon Chapel, Fort Kuykendall, Hickory Grove, Hook Tavern, North River Mills Historic District, Old Pine Church and Springfield Brick House. The house at Valley View was listed on the NRHP on December 12, 2012.
## Architecture
The house at Valley View is significant for its Greek Revival architectural elements. According to architectural historian Courtney Fint Zimmerman, "Valley View is a characteristic example of the Greek Revival style for more practical residential applications in outlying areas". The Valley View house has several Greek Revival design characteristics, including a symmetrical architectural plan and elevations and "substantial, formal" mass. Zimmerman (who prepared Valley View's registration form for the NRHP) said, "Valley View's applied details in the Greek Revival style, including the front entrance entablature and portico, are more limited, yet the variations that can be seen on Valley View and other estates in the South Branch Valley illustrate the flexibility inherent in the style". According to Zimmerman, large houses like Valley View served as the "centers" of the plantations that formed the "basis of the local economy and social life" in Hampshire County. Valley View was added to the NRHP as a locally significant example of Greek Revival architecture.
Valley View's house consists of the original 1855 brick section and a board-and-batten 1961–1962 kitchen addition. The grounds contain a smokehouse, a water well, the foundations of an ice house, and a summer kitchen.
The bricks from which the house was built were fired in the immediate vicinity (along the banks of the South Branch Potomac River), and the brick walls were reinforced with hand-wrought structural iron angles. The nails used in its construction were fabricated by a local blacksmith, and the wooden sills and joists were sawn by hand.
### Exterior
Valley View's house is a two-story brick structure with a rectangular architectural plan and exterior dimensions measuring about 49 by 32 feet (14.9 by 9.8 m). The house's exterior brick walls are 9 inches (23 cm) thick and laid in an American bond. The house is topped with a steep metal gabled roof with standing seam profiles. Two sets of double inside chimneys extend above the steep roofline on the northwestern and southeastern ends.
The front façade of the house faces a hill to the southwest. It is five bays wide, with the front entrance at the first floor's center bay. Wide double-hung sash windows are uniformly placed on the house's front façade, with four nine-over-six double-hung wooden sashes on the first story and five six-over-six double-hung wooden sash windows on the second. Each window is surrounded by green-painted wooden shutters and white-painted wooden lintels and sills.
The front entrance is covered by a small Greek Revival portico measuring about 12 by 12 feet (3.7 by 3.7 m), topped with a pediment supported by wooden Doric columns and engaged columns at the wall. The front porch is flanked by modest wooden handrails and balusters on its left and right sides. The front entrance is post and lintel (trabeated) construction, with a six-pane transom and two three-pane sidelight windows around the doorway. Zimmerman suggests that "Big Jim" Parsons embellished his home's front entrance to assert his "wealth and status" and provide "an honored welcome to visitors".
The rear façade of the house faces northeast, across the South Branch Potomac River valley toward Mill Creek Mountain. A two-story (double) wooden porch about 9 feet (2.7 m) deep extends across the rear of the house, topped by a shed roof extending from the main gabled roof at a shallower pitch. The first-story porch supports are brown wooden turned posts with no handrail or balusters, and the porch's second story has white painted square wood posts and vertical railings. Like the front façade, the rear façade is five bays wide; access to the double porch is through a door in the central bay on both levels. The other four bays have nine-over-six double-hung wooden sash windows on the first story and six-over-six double-hung wooden sash windows on the second story. The northwestern and southeastern sides of the house have one small square window at attic level, between each pair of inside chimneys.
### Interior
The interior of the Valley View house has a two-room-deep, central-hallway floor plan. Its wide central hallway contains a staircase from the first floor to the attic, with a wooden handrail supported with square balusters and a modest wooden turned newel post. The ceilings are 10 feet (3.0 m) high. Although the house's foundation is low, the height of the interior walls and the full-sized attic make the house appear tall from the outside.
The original house has eight large rooms, each with a fireplace framed by a wooden geometric trabeated mantelpiece with classical elements. The four large rooms on the first floor open from either side of the center hallway. They contain simple wide wood trim, including skirting boards and door frame moldings with "subtly demarcated corners". The house's living and dining rooms have wide, wooden dado rails. Most of the wooden decorative trim is painted white, and the walls are plaster. The lone exception is the room serving as an office and den, which has dark stained wooden trim and interior brick structural walls (exposed by the removal of its plaster during the 1960s). All rooms have the original wide plank wooden floors. The second floor has four bedrooms, with closets on either side of a fireplace and simple wood skirting boards and door frames. Parsons family members painted signatures and graffiti in the attic around 1856, which remain visible on the stairwell wall.
### Kitchen addition
A one-story kitchen addition, built in 1961–1962 and measuring about 21 by 14 feet (6.4 by 4.3 m), extends from the northwest side of the original 1855 house. The addition has a gabled standing seam metal roof, and its exterior is covered in white-painted board-and-batten siding. It has a vinyl bay window on the southwest side, a one-over-one double-hung vinyl window on the northeast side and a door (adjoining the wall of the 1855 house) on the southeast side. An enclosed board-and-batten porch, measuring about 14 by 10 feet (4.3 by 3.0 m), and a shed roof extend from the front (southwest) of the kitchen addition. The original basement under the 1855 house is accessible through this porch extension. A ghost building outline on the northwest side of the 1855 house indicates an earlier structure where the present kitchen addition stands.
### Ancillary structures
There are several ancillary structures near the house at Valley View, including a smokehouse and a water well, and the foundations of an ice house and a summer kitchen. Although the smokehouse, the summer kitchen and the ice house are believed to have been built by the Collinses before Big Jim Parsons built Valley View, the dates of construction are uncertain.
The smokehouse, measuring about 15 by 20 feet (4.6 by 6.1 m), is adjacent to the kitchen addition. It is set into a hillside, allowing at-grade entry to its two levels. Built of square-cut logs with white chinking atop a rubble masonry foundation, the smokehouse is topped with a standing seam metal gabled roof.
South of the smokehouse is the brick foundation of an ice house measuring about 15 by 20 feet (4.6 by 6.1 m) and topped by modern wooden pergola and patio structures. The 15-by-20-foot (4.6 by 6.1 m) brick foundation of Valley View's summer kitchen is north of the smokehouse and topped by a contemporary wooden pavilion with a gabled roof.
In the rear yard of the house is a water well, enclosed by a brick building about 7 by 7 feet (2.1 by 2.1 m) in area and 3.5 feet (1.1 m) in height. In the center of the well cap is a metal hand pump. Although the well cap's bricks are similar to those used in the construction of the main house, the well may date from an earlier residence on the site.
## See also
- List of historic sites in Hampshire County, West Virginia
- List of plantations in West Virginia
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Hampshire County, West Virginia
|
13,664,858 |
1880 Democratic National Convention
| 1,131,781,391 |
U.S. political convention
|
[
"1880 United States presidential election",
"1880 conferences",
"1880 in Ohio",
"19th century in Cincinnati",
"Conventions in Cincinnati",
"Democratic National Conventions",
"June 1880 events",
"Ohio Democratic Party",
"Political conventions in Ohio",
"Political events in Ohio"
] |
The 1880 Democratic National Convention was held June 22 to 24, 1880, at the Music Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio, and nominated Winfield S. Hancock of Pennsylvania for president and William H. English of Indiana for vice president in the United States presidential election of 1880.
Six men were officially candidates for nomination at the convention, and several more also received votes. Of these, the two leading candidates were Hancock and Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware. Not officially a candidate, but wielding a heavy influence over the convention, was the Democratic nominee from 1876, Samuel J. Tilden of New York. Many Democrats believed Tilden to have been unjustly deprived of the presidency in 1876 and hoped to rally around him in the 1880 campaign. Tilden, however, was ambiguous about his willingness to participate in another campaign, leading some delegates to defect to other candidates, while others stayed loyal to their old standard-bearer.
As the convention opened, some delegates favored Bayard, a conservative Senator, and some others supported Hancock, a career soldier and Civil War hero. Still others flocked to men they saw as surrogates for Tilden, including Henry B. Payne of Ohio, an attorney and former representative, and Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. The first round of balloting was inconclusive. Before the second round, Tilden's withdrawal from the campaign became known for certain and delegates flocked to Hancock, who was nominated. English, a conservative politician from a swing state, was nominated for vice president. Hancock and English were narrowly defeated in the race against Republicans James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur that autumn.
## Issues and candidates
In 1876, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio defeated Democrat Samuel J. Tilden of New York in the most hotly contested election to that time in the nation's history. The results initially indicated a Democratic victory, but the electoral votes of several states were ardently disputed until mere days before the new president was to be inaugurated. Members of both parties in Congress agreed to convene a bi-partisan Electoral Commission, which ultimately decided the race for Hayes. Most Democrats believed Tilden had been robbed of the presidency, and he became the leading candidate for nomination in 1880. In the meantime, issues of tariff reform and the gold standard divided the country and the major parties.
The monetary issue played a large role in selecting the nominees in 1880, but had little effect on the general election campaign. The debate concerned the basis for the United States dollar's value. Nothing but gold and silver coin had ever been legal tender in the United States until the Civil War, when the mounting costs of the war forced Congress to issue "greenbacks" (dollar bills backed by government bonds). They paid for the war, but resulted in the most severe inflation seen since the American Revolution. After the war, bondholders and other creditors (especially in the North) wanted to return to a gold standard. At the same time, debtors (often in the South and West) benefited by the way inflation reduced their debts, and workers and some businessmen liked the way inflation made for easy credit. The issue cut across parties, producing dissension among Republicans and Democrats alike and spawning a third party, the Greenback Party, in 1876, when both major parties nominated hard money men. Monetary debate intensified as Congress effectively demonetized silver in 1873 and began redeeming greenbacks in gold by 1879, while limiting their circulation. By the 1880 convention, the nation's money was backed by gold alone, but the issue was far from settled.
Debate over tariffs would come to play a much larger role in the campaign. During the Civil War, Congress raised protective tariffs to new heights. This was done partly to pay for the war, but partly because high tariffs were popular in the North. A high tariff meant that foreign goods were more expensive, which made it easier for American businesses to sell goods domestically. Republicans supported high tariffs as a way to protect American jobs and increase prosperity. Democrats, generally, saw them as making goods unnecessarily expensive and adding to the growing federal revenues when, with the end of the Civil War, that much revenue was no longer needed. Many Northern Democrats supported high tariffs, however, for the same economic reasons that their Republican neighbors did, so while Democratic platforms called for a tariff "for revenue only," their speakers avoided the question as much as possible.
### Tilden
Samuel Jones Tilden began his political career in the "Barnburner," or Free Soil, faction of the New York Democratic Party. He was a successful lawyer and had accumulated a considerable fortune. A disciple of former president Martin Van Buren, Tilden was first elected to the New York State Assembly in 1846. Tilden defected with Van Buren to the 1848 Free Soil Party convention before returning to the Democratic party after the election. Unlike many free-soil Democrats, Tilden stayed with his party in the 1850s instead of transferring his allegiance to the newly formed Republican party. When the Civil War began, he remained loyal to the Union and considered himself a War Democrat. In 1866, he became chairman of the New York State Democratic party, a post he held for eight years. Tilden initially cooperated with Tammany Hall, the New York City political machine of William "Boss" Tweed, but the two men soon became enemies. In the early 1870s, as reports of Tammany's corruption spread, Tilden took up the cause of reform. He formed a rival faction that captured control of the party and led the effort to uncover proof of Tammany's corruption and remove its men from office. Tweed was soon indicted and convicted; Tammany was weakened and reformed, but not vanquished.
The triumph over Tammany paved the way for Tilden's election to a two-year term as governor in 1874. As a popular, reformist governor of a large swing state, Tilden was a natural candidate for the presidency in 1876, when one of the main issues was the corruption of the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant. He was nominated on the second ballot, and campaigned on a platform of reform and sound money (i.e. the gold standard). His opponent was Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, likewise noted for his honesty and hard-money views. After the closely contested election, with the question still unresolved, Congress and President Grant agreed to submit the dispute to a bipartisan Electoral Commission, which would determine the fate of the disputed electoral votes. Tilden opposed the idea, but many Democrats supported it as the only way to avoid a second Civil War. The commission voted 8–7 to award Hayes the disputed votes. Congressional Democrats acquiesced in Hayes's election, but at a price: the new Republican president withdrew federal troops from Southern capitals after his inauguration. Tilden was defeated—robbed, in his opinion and that of his supporters.
Tilden spent the next four years as the presumptive Democratic candidate in 1880. In 1879, he declined to run for another term as governor and focused instead on building support for the 1880 presidential nomination. He considered many of his former friends (including Senator Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware) enemies now for their support of the Electoral Commission, and sought to keep the "fraud of '76" in the spotlight and burnish his own future candidacy by having his congressional allies investigate the events of the post-election maneuvering. For ten months beginning in May 1878, the Potter Committee, chaired by Democratic Congressman Clarkson Nott Potter of New York, investigated allegations of fraud and corruption in the states which had contested electoral votes in 1876. Rather than produce conclusive evidence of Republican malfeasance, as Tilden's supporters hoped, the committee exonerated Tilden of wrongdoing, but uncovered conflicting evidence that showed state election officials of both parties in an unfavorable light. This, and Tilden's declining health, made many Democrats question his candidacy. Even so, Tilden's presumed ability to carry New York, combined with his political organization and personal fortune, made him a serious contender.
The first of these qualifications was shattered with the Republican victory in the New York gubernatorial election in 1879. In that election, a revitalized Tammany split from the regular Democratic party in a patronage dispute with Tilden's faction (now known as the "Irving Hall Democrats"). Tammany ran its new leader, "Honest" John Kelly, as an independent candidate for governor, allowing the Republicans to carry the state with a plurality of the vote. Tilden began to waver, issuing ambiguous statements about whether he would run again. Rumors circulated wildly in the months before the convention, with no definitive word from Tilden. As the New York delegation left for the national convention in Cincinnati, Tilden gave a letter to one of his chief supporters, Daniel Manning, suggesting that his health might force him to decline the nomination. Tilden hoped to be nominated, but only if he was the unanimous choice of the convention; if not, Manning was entrusted to make the contents of Tilden's letter available to the New York delegation. When it became clear that the nomination would be contested, Manning revealed the contents of the Tilden letter; it was vague and inconclusive, but once is contents became known to Tilden's home state delegates, they chose to interpret it as a withdrawal. The New York delegation now considered Tilden's candidacy to be ended, and sought a new standard-bearer.
### Bayard
One beneficiary of Tilden's departure from the scene was Senator Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware. Bayard was the scion of an old political family in Delaware and had represented his state in the United States Senate since 1869. As one of a relative handful of conservative Democrats in the Senate at the time, Bayard began his career opposing vigorously, if ineffectively, the Republican majority's plans for the Reconstruction of the Southern states after the Civil War. Like Tilden, Bayard supported the gold standard and had a reputation for honesty. At the 1876 convention, Bayard had placed a distant fifth in the balloting, but supported Tilden's cause in the general election, speaking on his behalf around the country. The political friendship between the two quickly soured in the election's aftermath as Bayard supported the Electoral Commission and Tilden opposed it. Bayard believed the commission was the only alternative to civil war, and served as one of the Democratic members; Tilden took this as a personal betrayal.
In the four years that followed, Bayard sought to build support for another run at the nomination. He and Tilden competed for support among Eastern conservatives because of their support for the gold standard. The gold standard was less popular in the South, but there Bayard stacked his years-long advocacy in the Senate for pro-Southern conservative policies against Tilden's political machine and wealth in the contest for Southern delegates. A blow to Bayard's cause came in February 1880 when the New York Sun, a newspaper friendly to Tilden, published a transcript of a speech Bayard made in Dover, Delaware, in 1861. As the states of the Deep South were seceding from the Union, a young Bayard had proclaimed "with this secession, or revolution, or rebellion, or by whatever name it may be called, the State of Delaware has naught to do", and urged that the South be permitted to withdraw from the Union in peace. To many in the South, this confirmed their view of Bayard as their champion, but paradoxically it weakened Bayard's support with other Southerners, who feared that a former Peace Democrat would never be acceptable to Northerners. At the same time, Bayard's uncompromising stance on the money question pushed some Democrats to support Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, who had not been identified with either extreme in the gold–silver debate and had a military record that appealed to Northerners. As the convention opened, Bayard was still among the leading candidates, but was far from certain of victory.
### Hancock
Winfield Scott Hancock represented an unusual confluence in the post-war nation: a man who believed in the Democratic Party's principles of states' rights and limited government, but whose anti-secessionist sentiment was unimpeachable. A native of Pennsylvania, Hancock graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1844 and began a forty-year career as a soldier. He served with distinction in the Mexican–American War and in the antebellum peacetime army. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Hancock remained loyal to the Union. He was promoted to brevet brigadier general in 1861 and placed in command of a brigade in the Army of the Potomac. In the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, he led a critical counterattack and earned the nickname "Hancock the Superb" from his commander, Major General George B. McClellan. At Antietam, he led a division in the Union victory and was promoted to major general. Hancock's shining moment came at the Battle of Gettysburg when he organized the scattered troops, rallied defenses, and was wounded on the third day as his troops turned back Pickett's Charge.
Since 1864, when he received a single unsolicited vote at the Democratic National Convention, Hancock had been a perennial candidate. As military governor of Louisiana and Texas in 1867, Hancock had won the respect of the white conservative population by issuing his General Order Number 40, in which he stated that if the residents of the district conducted themselves peacefully and the civilian officials performed their duties, then "the military power should cease to lead, and the civil administration resume its natural and rightful dominion." He had a larger following at the 1868 convention, finishing as high as second place in some rounds of balloting. In 1876, Hancock again drew a considerable following, but never finished higher than third place at that year's convention. In 1880, another Hancock boom began, this time centered mostly in the South. In March of that year, the New Orleans Picayune ran an editorial that called for the general's nomination, partly for who he was—a war hero with conservative political principles—and partly for who he was not—a known partisan of either side of the monetary or tariff debates. As Tilden and Bayard rose and fell in the estimation of Democratic voters, Hancock's bid for nomination gathered steam. Some were unsure whether, after eight years of Grant, himself a former general, the party would be wise to give the nomination to another "man on horseback", but Hancock remained among the leading contenders as the convention began that June.
### Other contenders
Several other candidates arrived in Cincinnati with delegates pledged to them. Former Representative Henry B. Payne, an Ohio millionaire, had gathered a number of former Tilden supporters to his cause. Payne was a corporate lawyer and hard money advocate, but also a relative unknown outside Ohio. In April 1880, the New York Star published a tale that Tilden had bowed out of the race and instructed the Irving Hall faction to back Payne for the presidency. Tilden never confirmed the rumor, but after his letter of June 1880 to the New York delegation, many of his supporters did consider Payne among their likely choices. Payne, like Bayard, had served on the Electoral Commission of 1876, but had nevertheless maintained Tilden's friendship. He maintained his loyalty to Tilden until the convention, when his withdrawal was certain. Payne was hindered by a fellow Ohioan, Senator Allen G. Thurman, who controlled their home state's delegation. Thurman looked like a natural successor to Tilden, as a popular conservative from a swing state with a background as an attorney, but he, like Bayard, had earned Tilden's enmity by serving on the Electoral Commission. Thurman was also less wedded to the gold standard than some Northeastern delegates would tolerate.
Another would-be heir to Tilden was Samuel J. Randall, since 1863 a congressman from Philadelphia. Like Tilden, Randall was conservative on the money question but, unusually for a Democrat, he supported high tariffs to protect American industry. He also advocated legislation to reduce the power of monopolies. Tilden had supported Randall in his quest to become Speaker of the House, and Randall returned the favor by remaining a loyal Tilden man up to the convention. He now hoped for the support of the former Tilden adherents in his quest for the presidency. Former Governor Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana, Tilden's 1876 running mate, also sought a claim on the previous nominee's support. He came from a crucial swing state that the Democrats had narrowly carried in 1876 and had some support in the Midwestern states. His popularity with delegates from the Northeast was impaired by his views on the currency question; he sided with those who wanted looser money.
Two candidates stood with rather less support. William Ralls Morrison of Illinois had served in Congress since 1873 and was best known for advocating tariff reductions despite hailing from a protectionist district. He commanded little support outside his home state, and was seen as only a favorite son. Justice Stephen Johnson Field of the United States Supreme Court was better known, but still an unlikely contender. The only candidate from the Far West, Field was respected as a scholar of the law, but had greatly diminished his chances with his home state of California by striking down anti-Chinese legislation in that state in 1879. Even so, some observers, including Edwards Pierrepont, considered Field a likely choice for the nomination.
## Convention
### Preliminaries
The delegates assembled on June 22, 1880, at Cincinnati's Music Hall. The venue was a large, red brick building in the High Victorian Gothic style, which had opened in 1878. Intended, as the name suggests, for musical performances, the hall also functioned as Cincinnati's convention center until a separate building was constructed in 1967. William Henry Barnum of Connecticut, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called the convention to order at 12:38 p.m. An opening prayer was presented by Unitarian minister Charles William Wendte. Then, George Hoadly, a Tilden associate and future governor of Ohio, was elected temporary chairman. Hoadly addressed the crowd, then adjourned the convention until 10:00 a.m. the next day, so that the Committee on Credentials could consider certain disputes among the delegates.
At the start of the second day, June 23, the Committee on Permanent Organization announced the roster of officers, including the permanent president, John W. Stevenson of Kentucky. Before the delegates could formally elect Stevenson, they heard the report on the Committee on Credentials. Two rival factions of Massachusetts Democrats had agreed to compromise, both being admitted as a united delegation. A similar dispute in New York was not resolved so easily: Tammany Hall and Tilden's Irving Hall had sent rival delegations as well, and neither was willing to compromise. The committee had voted to consider the Irving Hall Democrats to have been regularly elected; Tammany was consequently excluded. Debate followed, in which some delegates urged compromise, with the idea that a united delegation would help unite the party in New York in the coming general election. The argument was unpersuasive, as the delegates endorsed the committee's decision by a vote of 457 to 205+1⁄2; Tammany was banished. Stevenson was then installed as permanent chairman and, as the Committee on Resolutions had not finished writing the platform, the delegates moved on to nominations.
### Nominations
The clerk called the roll of states alphabetically. The first delegation to nominate a candidate was California. John Edgar McElrath, an Oakland attorney, rose to nominate Justice Stephen J. Field. Extolling Field's virtues and learning, McElrath promised that, if nominated, "he will sweep California like the winds that blow through her Golden Gate." George Gray, Delaware's Attorney General and a future United States Senator, next nominated Thomas F. Bayard. Gray, in a speech that evinced his admiration for the Senator, said of Bayard:
> Thomas Francis Bayard is a statesman who will need no introduction to the American people. His name and record are known wherever our flag floats, aye, wherever the English tongue is spoken. ... With his sympathies as broad as this great continent, a private character as spotless as the snow from heaven, a judgment as clear as the sunlight, an intellect as keen and bright as a flashing sabre, honest in thought and deed, the people all know him by heart.
Illinois was the next state to offer a name, as former Representative Samuel S. Marshall rose to submit that of his erstwhile colleague, William R. Morrison. Marshall immediately antagonized the South by comparing Morrison to Abraham Lincoln, and proclaimed that Morrison's belief in tariff reduction would be a "tower of strength" in the election.
Next, Senator Daniel W. Voorhees of Indiana spoke on behalf of Thomas A. Hendricks, praising Hendricks as a candidate of national unity: "[T]o the South, who has been more faithful? To the North, who has been truer? To the East, who has been better, wiser, more conservative and more faithful? And to the West I need not appeal, for he is our own son." The next few states made no nominations. When the roll reached New York, there were cries from the crowd for Tilden, and some confusion when that state's delegation made no nomination.
The next nomination came from Ohio, as John McSweeney made the case for Senator Allen G. Thurman. "Great in genius, correct in judgment," as McSweeney described him in a lengthy speech, Thurman was "of unrivaled eloquence in defense of the right, with a spotless name, he stands forth as a born leader of the people." Next came the Pennsylvania delegation, from which Daniel Dougherty rose. Dougherty, a Philadelphia lawyer, gave a short and effective speech in favor of Winfield Scott Hancock.
> I present ... one who, on the field of battle, was styled "the Superb," ... Whose nomination will thrill the land from end to end and crush the last embers of sectional strife, and be hailed as the dawning of the longed-for day of perpetual brotherhood. ... With him as our chieftain, the bloody banner of the Republicans will fall from their palsied grasp. We can appeal to the supreme tribunal of the American people against the corruptions of the republican party and its untold violations of constitutional liberty.
As Dougherty finished his speech, delegates and spectators shouted for Hancock. After five minutes, the cheers subsided. Senator Wade Hampton III of South Carolina, a former Confederate general, next spoke to praise Hancock, saying "we of the South would feel safe in his hands", but said that Bayard was ultimately his choice "because we believe he is the strongest man". Richard B. Hubbard, a former governor of Texas and Confederate soldier, spoke in favor Hancock as his state seconded the Pennsylvanian's nomination. Hubbard praised Hancock's conduct as military governor of Texas and Louisiana, saying, "in our hour of sorrow, when he held his power at the hands of the great dominant Republican party ... there stood a man with the constitution before him, reading it as the fathers read it; that the war having ended we resumed the habiliments that as a right belong to us, not as a conquered province, but as a free people." The last few states were called and the nominations ended. After a motion to adjourn failed, the delegates proceeded directly to the balloting.
### Balloting
The clerk called the roll of the states again, and a band played "Yankee Doodle" and "Dixie" as the ballots were tallied. The results showed that the delegates had scattered their ballots to a variety of candidates, with no one close to the 492 necessary to nominate (at that time, Democratic conventions required a two-thirds majority for nomination). There was a clear delineation, however, as Hancock and Bayard, with 171 and 158+1⁄2 respectively, were far ahead of the pack. The next closest, Payne, had less than half of Hancock's number, with 81. After one minor shift of 1⁄2 ballot, the totals were announced to the delegates. They voted to adjourn for the day, clearing the way for the off-site negotiations that would influence the next day's ballot.
The delegates assembled the next day, June 24, to resume the balloting. Before that could begin, Rufus Wheeler Peckham of the New York delegation produced Tilden's letter and read it to the crowd. The first mention of Tilden's name provoked excitement, but the meaning of the message soon quieted the crowd. Peckham announced that, with Tilden's withdrawal, New York, now supported Samuel J. Randall. Moving then to the second ballot, more than one hundred delegates followed Peckham's lead in voting for Randall, boosting his total to 128+1⁄2, just above Bayard's 112. But the shift to Hancock had been greater. Before the totals were announced to the crowd, Hancock had gathered 320 delegates to him; as soon as the voting stopped, however, Wisconsin, and New Jersey changed all of their votes to Hancock. Pennsylvania added those of their votes that were not already for Hancock. Then Smith M. Weed of New York, a Tilden confidante, announced that his state, too, would shift all of its 70 votes to Hancock. After that, according to the party records, "every delegate was on his feet and the roar of ten thousand voices completely drowned the full military band in the gallery."
Nearly all of the remaining states now stampeded for Hancock. When the second vote was finally tallied, Hancock had 705. Only Indiana refrained completely from joining in, casting its 30 votes for Hendricks; two Bayard voters from Maryland and one Tilden man from Iowa were the remaining hold-outs. After the second round was tallied, the nomination was made unanimous. Several delegates then spoke to praise Hancock and promise that he would triumph in the coming election. Even Tammany's John Kelly was permitted to speak. Kelly pledged his faction's loyalty to the party, saying, "Let us unite as a band of brothers and look upon each other kindly and favorably."
\* The candidate was not formally nominated.
### Platform and vice presidential nominee
Turning to other matters, the delegates listened as Susan B. Anthony addressed them with a plea for women's suffrage. The delegates took no action, and moved on to the platform, which Henry Watterson of Kentucky read aloud. The spirit of unanimity continued as the delegates approved it without dissent. The platform was, in the words of historian Herbert J. Clancy, "deliberately vague and general" on some points, designed to appeal to the largest number possible. In it, they pledged to work for "constitutional doctrines and traditions," to oppose centralization, to favor "honest money consisting of gold and silver", a "tariff for revenue only", and to put an end to Chinese immigration. Most of this was uncontroversial, but the "tariff for revenue only" would become a major point of debate in the coming campaign.
Finally, the delegates turned to the vice presidency. Edmund Pettus, representing Alabama, moved the nomination of William Hayden English, a banker and former representative from Indiana. English, a member of the Indiana delegation, was fairly unknown to most delegates. He had been a Bayard enthusiast and was known as a successful businessman and hard money supporter; more crucially, he hailed from an important swing state. While Hendricks was a better-known representative of Indiana, Easterners in the party preferred English, who they saw as sounder on the money question. Several states seconded the nomination. John P. Irish of Iowa nominated former governor Richard M. Bishop of Ohio but, after all the other states expressed support for English, the Ohio delegation requested that Bishop's name be withdrawn and English's nomination made unanimous; the motion carried.
## Aftermath
Keeping with the custom at the time, Hancock did not campaign personally, but stayed at his post at Fort Columbus on Governors Island, in New York Harbor and met with visitors there (as General Grant had in 1868, Hancock remained on active duty throughout the campaign). Both parties' campaigns began with a focus on the candidates rather than the issues. Democratic newspapers attacked the Republican nominee, James A. Garfield of Ohio, over rumors of corruption and self-dealing in the Crédit Mobilier affair, among others. Republicans characterized Hancock as uninformed on the issues, and some of his former comrades-in-arms gave critical speeches regarding his character. Democrats never made clear what about their victory would improve the nation; Hancock biographer David M. Jordan later characterized their message as simply "our man is better than your man".
Both parties knew that, with the end of Reconstruction and the disenfranchisement of black Southerners, the South would be solid for Hancock, netting 137 electoral votes of the 185 needed for victory. To this, the Democrats needed only add a few of the closely balanced Northern states; New York (35 electoral votes) and Indiana (15) were two of their main targets, but New Jersey and the Midwestern states were also battlegrounds. Early in the campaign, Republicans used their standard tactic of "waving the bloody shirt", that is, reminding Northern voters that the Democratic Party was responsible for secession and four years of civil war, and that if they held power they would reverse the gains of that war, dishonor Union veterans, and pay Confederate veterans pensions out of the federal treasury. With fifteen years having passed since the end of the war, and Union generals at the head of both tickets, the bloody shirt was of less effect than it had been in the past.
By October, Republicans shifted to a new issue: the tariff. Seizing on the Democratic platform's call for a "tariff for revenue only", Republicans told Northern workers that a Hancock presidency would weaken the tariff protection that kept them in good jobs. Hancock made the situation worse when, attempting to strike a moderate stance, he said "the tariff question is a local question". The answer seemed only to reinforce the Republicans' characterization of him as ignorant of the issues. In the end, fewer than two thousand votes separated the two candidates, but in the Electoral College, Garfield had an easy victory over Hancock, 214 to 155.
## See also
- History of the United States Democratic Party
- United States presidential nominating convention
- Winfield Scott Hancock 1880 presidential campaign
- List of Democratic National Conventions
- 1880 Republican National Convention
- 1880 United States presidential election
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Naruto Uzumaki
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Main character of the manga and anime series ''Naruto''
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"Fictional amputees",
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"Fictional characters who can duplicate themselves",
"Fictional characters with air or wind abilities",
"Fictional child soldiers",
"Fictional ninja",
"Male characters in anime and manga",
"Naruto characters",
"Orphan characters in anime and manga",
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"Teenage characters in anime and manga"
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Naruto Uzumaki (Japanese: うずまき ナルト, Hepburn: Uzumaki Naruto) (/ˈnɑːrətoʊ/) is the titular protagonist of the manga Naruto, created by Masashi Kishimoto. As the series progresses, he is a young ninja from the fictional village of Konohagakure (Hidden Leaf Village). The villagers ridicule and ostracize Naruto on account of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox—a malevolent creature that attacked Konohagakure—that was sealed away in Naruto's body. Despite this, he aspires to become his village's leader, the Hokage, in order to receive their approval. His carefree, optimistic, and boisterous personality enables him to befriend other Konohagakure ninja, as well as ninja from other villages. Naruto appears in the series' films and in other media related to the franchise, including video games and original video animations (OVA), as well as the sequel Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, where he is the Hokage, and his son, Boruto Uzumaki, is the protagonist.
When creating Naruto for the initial part of the series, Kishimoto kept the character "simple and stupid", while giving him many attributes of an ideal hero. Kishimoto gave Naruto a dark side by adding tragedy to the character's past. He has revised Naruto's image many times, providing the character with different clothes intended to appeal to Western audiences and to make him easier to illustrate. Kishimoto changed his design for Part II of the storyline, which starts two-and-a-half years after Part I. Naruto is voiced by Junko Takeuchi in the original animated series and Maile Flanagan in the English adaptations.
Merchandise based on Naruto includes figurines and keychains. Naruto's character development has been praised by anime and manga publications and has drawn scholarly attention. Although some initially saw him as a typical manga and anime protagonist comparable to those in other shōnen manga, others have praised his personality and character development as he avoids stereotypes typically seen in similar media. The character has also been the subject of researches in literature, making him stand out in fiction based on his traits and growth.
## Creation and conception
### Original concept and influences
During the 1990s, new manga author Masashi Kishimoto sought to write a one-shot chapter that would feature Naruto as a chef, but this version never made it to print. Kishimoto originally wanted to make Naruto a child who could transform into a fox, so he created a one-shot of Naruto for the summer 1997 issue of Akamaru Jump magazine based on the idea. When comparing both the Naruto one-shot and his other work, Karakuri, Kishimoto realized that former's title character was more appealing than the lead of Karakuri. Kishimoto reflects Naruto's "honest" smile was well received in contrast to the sly look the main character from Karakuri had. Following the success of another one-shot, Mario, Kishimoto started working on the Naruto series where he wanted to reuse the title character from his earlier one-shot. Kishimoto wrote the first two chapters to show his appeal to the readers and then focus on the other protagonists despite difficulties. Following the second chapter, Kishimoto introduced the other protagonists but as bad relationships including with Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto's constant reject crushes at Sakura Haruno. The manga story was planned to show Naruto's coming-of-age through multiple fights and looked forward to seeing the conclusion.
For the serialized version, Kishimoto incorporated traits he felt made an ideal hero in the creation of Naruto: a straightforward way of thinking, a mischievous side, and attributes possessed by Goku from the Dragon Ball franchise. Aiming to keep Naruto "simple and stupid", Although Goku was a major influence to Naruto, Kishimoto was more attracted by Dragon Ball character Krillin as he comes across as more human than the protagonist for displaying flaws that made the readers easier to accept in a similar fashion to his mentor Iruka Umino. Kishimoto avoided modeling him after anyone in particular, instead conceiving of him as naïve with a dark side resulting from his harsh past. Despite this, he is always optimistic, a trait Kishimoto said makes this character unique. By and large, Naruto's personality is childish; the creator tried to convey this trait in his illustrations. Kishimoto notes as an example of this the cover of volume 10, where Kishimoto depicts Naruto mimicking a turtle as a child might do. Naruto was Kishimoto's first published manga, and he focused on making Naruto's facial expressions consistent in difficult situations. He commented: "It's rather awkward to talk about what makes Naruto appealing to audiences, but I think his being a knucklehead gives him an appeal." He believed it was Naruto's losses that made readers identify with him, although he wanted Naruto not to feel defeat again, which was his primary aim when writing the series. Kishimoto has said that Naruto's burning desire to be a ninja was based on his own ambition to succeed as a manga artist. As the series went on, Kishimtoto wrote the older incarnations of Naruto to be naive idealists due to how Naruto was written to continuously avoid repeating previous mistakes. However, at the same Kishimoto wrote him as a sign of hope, something important in regard to the series' audience.
In the original Japanese versions of Naruto, Naruto often ends his sentences with the addendum "-ttebayo" (which achieves an effect similar to ending a sentence with "you know?" in English). Kishimoto wanted to give Naruto a childlike catchphrase, and "dattebayo" came to mind; he believed that the phrase complements Naruto's character, and served as a verbal tic that portrayed him in a brattish manner. Throughout the first episodes of the English dub version, "dattebayo" and "-ttebayo" were replaced with the phrase "Believe it!", both to mirror the effect, and to match the character's lip movements, although later in the English dub Naruto stopped saying "Believe it" and the phrase was replaced with "You Know?".
### Development
After fans likened Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura to the three main characters from Harry Potter fantasy books, Kishimoto noted that both trios began their careers in a classroom, though he added that the similarity was unintentional. During the series' publication, Kishimoto married and had children. This influenced how he viewed Naruto's character. Naruto met his parents, and learned of their sacrifices in order to help him to control the Fox inside him so that he could protect their world. As a result, Naruto appreciated his life more and learned that his parents loved him, something the author wanted the character to feel based on his own experience as a father. In the first chapters of the series, Kishimoto did not conceive the idea that Naruto would be the son of Minato Namikaze. However, as time passed on, the manga author made touches to Minato's face shown in the Hokage Mountain in Konoha to make them more similar to Naruto with an emphasis on their spiky hairs. However, in order to reduce too many similarities, Kushina Uzumaki's character was made to look like Naruto's face.
Out of all the student-teacher relationships Kishimoto has created in the Naruto series, the one between Naruto and Jiraiya is his favorite. Right before Jiraiya's death in his fight against Pain in his last moments, he discovers the origin of Pain's multiple bodies and uses his last forces to send that message as a piece of advice to Naruto so that Naruto could defeat him in his place. This arc was the most difficult one to write; he felt this because Naruto truly forgave his enemy. Instead of having the protagonist kill the enemy he hates as happens in other series, Kishimoto found the idea of the two characters interacting and settling their differences more challenging. This had a major impact on the writer, and he decided to have Naruto forgive Sasuke during their final fight in a similar manner as he interacted with Nagato. Kishimoto felt the need to create a story arc that would emphasize the tragedy of wars, leading to the final arc which would include a war. The principal reason for this was a significant difference between the two main characters, Naruto who had no knowledge of wars, and Sasuke who was a victim of one; his entire clan had been annihilated to avoid a potential civil war. As a result, Kishimoto created Nagato as a war victim who would Jiraiya, and act as Naruto's nemesis so he would understand the tragedy that Sasuke had experienced. As a result, Naruto's coming-of-age would have been completed in this arc and the final arc where Naruto deals with world war and develops a vision of the shinobi world as well as how he should handle the conflict.
In 2013, when Naruto was reaching its climax, Kishimoto envisioned the idea of Naruto becoming a father. This resulted in the creation of Boruto Uzumaki, Naruto and Hinata's first child. Kishimoto wanted Boruto to act like his father, but at the same time, have differences between each other. Despite not wishing to reveal much about Boruto due to developments of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, he added that Boruto is not as direct as Naruto. In the 2015 film Boruto: Naruto the Movie, Kishimoto developed Boruto and Naruto's relationship from his relationship with his sons. In portraying the adult Naruto, Kishimoto did not want to make the character to give a cool impression in contrast to his younger days as a war hero because Naruto being a strong father figure to Boruto would be too boring for the narrative. Instead, Kishimoto wanted the film to depict the father and son relationship between Boruto and Naruto. Similarly, Chengxi Huang wanted to properly display Naruto's facial expression during this scene as stating that while Naruto has grown up ever since his introduction, his gentle smile was the same. Manga author Mikio Ikemoto claimed the scene in which Naruto helps his son to create a large Rasengan was his favorite at the time of drawing Boruto as across this moment he had to draw Naruto's past to the point he "felt the weight of NARUTO series and its long history behind it."
#### Rivalry
Early in the making of the series, Kishimoto had poor faith in the manga as he believes the series was lacking something to become popular. After being recommended by his editor to give the protagonist a rival, Kishimoto wrote Sasuke with influences from Takehiko Inoue's Slam Dunk manga which was famous for dealing with rivalries. When first introducing Sasuke, Kishimoto wrote him as a rival who never noticed Naruto. However, as the series continued, Naruto became strong enough to finally be recognized by Sasuke as a rival. He also intended for both of them to be brother-like due to the fact both characters suffered loneliness, something which made the readers relate to them as he noted through fan letters. By Part I's ending, the bond between Naruto and Sasuke was weakened as a result of their fight but still expected from the time when the Sasuke accepted Naruto as an equal. Kishimoto compared Sasuke and Naruto to the concept of yin and yang because of their notable differences. When one of the two progressed, Kishimoto made sure the other did too. During the climax of Part I, Naruto and Sasuke engage in a mortal fight which was directed by Atsushi Wakabayashi from Pierrot. In an interview, the director claimed that the animation was based on a journey to Lake Mashu from Hokkaido to come up with new ideas. Wakabayashi aimed for the characters to move stilted based on storyboards he made, leading to entertaining sequences. When Naruto becomes berserker due to the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox's influence, Norio Matsumoto aimed to make Naruto behave like a beast with Wakabayashi aiming to make Naruto look like an equal to his rival. The staff was inspired by the 1970s series like the boxing series Ashita no Joe, most notably its lead character, Joe Yabuki, who was often seen as an underdog the audience rooted for. However, the team still worked carefully to make the two ninjas be equals without overpowering each other.
Before the serialization began, Kishimoto had decided the ending would feature a fight between Naruto and Sasuke. He wanted the conflict to end with Naruto forgiving Sasuke as he had forgiven Nagato while also aiming it as their final battle in the manga. In regard to the fight, Kishimoto wanted to focus on hand-to-hand combat rather than ninja techniques. Anime staff Chengxi Huang said the animated adaptation of this fight, the group worked carefully to depict the action in every scene by showing changes on Sasuke and Naruto's clothes and hair. Huang added he felt fatigue by working so much into this fight due to reaching 70 successive cuts at a time.
The final fight between Sasuke and Naruto was considered one biggest challenges by the staff from Pierrot as it took an entire month to adapt it from the manga. Director Hiroyuki Yamashita elected himself in charge of the battle which left most of the anime members relieved due to his experience. For the scenario, Pierrot received assistance from the CyberConnect2 develop who had already adapted this battle through the fighting game Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4. There was a need to make every movement in the fight to look realistic, giving Sasuke a scary look as well the hair movement in order to express the idea of both fighters willing to do anything to kill each other, which confused some due to Naruto's wish to avoid this fate. The final clash between Sasuke's Chidori and Naruto's Rasengan moves involved references from other scenes of the series to give the viewer a bigger emotional impact. The staff noted that following this fight, Sasuke's face became calmer despite his initial look, giving room to explore his redemption. A symbolism Kishimoto used in the series' finale following the final battle was Naruto returning Sasuke his original bandana representing how their bonds are tied again and no longer have a reason to kill each other.
#### Love interests
Naruto's romantic partner was decided during the early stages of the manga. Since Hinata Hyuga always respected Naruto, even before the series' beginning, even before his academy mentor Iruka Umino, Kishimoto felt they were meant to be. This angered his wife who wanted Naruto to marry Sakura Haruno. When Sakura was introduced, Kishimoto did not think of her as Naruto's future wife, as he saw them as being just friends and teammates, although once Hinata had appeared, the author thought of forming a love triangle between the three characters. He later regretted the love triangle as he considered Naruto a fighting series with little focus on romance, and he reiterated that "it was all about Naruto and Hinata getting married from an early stage."
When seeing the staff's work to focus a film on Naruto's relationship with Hinata, The Last: Naruto the Movie, Kishimoto decided to oversee the project. Nevertheless, he enjoyed seeing Naruto and Hinata's romantical scenes he did not write. In regard to Naruto's rank which remains as the lowest one, Genin, due to Naruto spending most of his Part II's time fighting and training, Kishimoto decided Naruto would skip the following ranks to become the Hokage, which he felt was appealing. In the making of The Last: Naruto the Movie, Hinata makes a red scarf for Naruto. This was based on how Kishimoto's wife actually once did which brought laughs to the staff developing the film.
Screenwriter Maruo Kyozuka said that he wanted to depict a love triangle between Naruto, Hinata and Toneri Otsutsuki in the film. Although Naruto is initially clueless about Hinata's feelings for him, during the film he begins to acknowledge and respond to them. Hinata's character was also developed in the film, with Kyozuka saying that she had to put aside her feelings for Naruto to accept Toneri's proposal so she could find Hanabi. During this scene, Kyozuka wanted to depict Naruto at his lowest after his rejection by Hinata. He then returned Naruto to his brave self, with the character resolving to continue his mission regardless of the cost. Animator Chengxi Huang behind multiple Naruto series took a liking to this couple ever since he started working in Naruto Shippuden, often aiming to draw scenes of the two and most notably a scene from the final arc when Hinata slaps Naruto to calm him following the death of Neji Hyuga. In the making of the film, he thanked Kishimoto for accepting to do The Last where the couple was explored furthermore. He looked at their adult selves as an appealing married couple but had to remove a video he made that received backlash for being inappropriate for the demographic.
### Design
Although a real ninja wears blue to be inconspicuous, Kishimoto gave Naruto an orange jumpsuit to fit the shōnen genre. His wardrobe is based on clothing that Kishimoto wore when he was younger. According to him, a pre-existing design would not have made Naruto unique, whereas something original would have made him too distinctive. Because Naruto is associated with spirals in terms of objects he uses, the designer incorporated swirl patterns into the costume. Initial illustrations depicted Naruto in boots, but Kishimoto replaced these with sandals, because he enjoys drawing toes. The goggles Naruto used to wear were replaced with a hitai-ite, or shinobi headband, because they were too time-consuming to draw. One of the most difficult design choices was the color palette of Naruto's outfit. The orange in his costume makes Naruto pop and the blue parts are complementary. Kishimoto apologized to the anime staff for Naruto's design, as he considered it too difficult to animate.
Kishimoto was satisfied with his character having blond hair and blue eyes, something rarely seen in Japanese anime or manga. This also appealed to an international readership, something the editor of the American magazine Shonen Jump has noted. Of all his series' characters, Kishimoto most identified with Naruto. When asked why Naruto's favorite food was ramen instead of kitsune udon, Kishimoto said that he himself likes eating ramen. In the Naruto: Clash of Ninja video game series, Naruto is playable in various stages of the Demon Fox's manifestation, characterized by a red chakra. Kishimoto took inspiration from the games' presentation of these forms, imitating one of them for the manga cover of volume 26.
When designing Naruto for his Part II appearance, Kishimoto changed his character's clothing to an orange and black top, orange pants, and black sandals. He also gave him a red cape with black flames at the bottom when fighting Pain, a member of the Akatsuki. He drew Naruto's forehead-protector wider to make his eyebrows easier to draw, something that had bothered him with his previous design. He also noted that Naruto's pants made the character look too childish. To remedy this, Kishimoto designed them to roll up, giving him a more mature appearance. He gave Naruto this look in order to make him stand out during action scenes.
For the events of the film The Last: Naruto the Movie (2014) as well as the final episodes of Naruto: Shippuden, Naruto was given a young adult appearance. His hair was made shorter, while his height was expanded notably in contrast to his Part II design. He was given two different outfits, a casual look consisting of an orange shirt as well as a design consisting of a black shirt with orange pants specifically meant for his missions. Due to his growth, Naruto wears a different headband, while his new ninja appearance was created with the purpose of being able to carry weapons more easily. Nevertheless, both looks keep the character's spiralling logo that was carried from his late mother's gone group, the Uzumaki clan.
### Voice actors
Although a male voice actor was sought for the Japanese adaptation of the Naruto role, the actress Junko Takeuchi was chosen instead over many male applicants. Before recording the first episode, Takeuchi noticed several lines from the script that ended with exclamation marks, which helped her to define Naruto's voice. She noted difficulties in transitioning from the young Naruto to the older Naruto in the animated adaptation of Part II. She had to record the first episode of Part II when Naruto's character was older and more mature only one week after voicing the younger, immature character. Nine years after first voicing the character, while still finding it tough to voice Naruto, Takeuchi's opinion of him changed with her feeling he was "a very reliable young man." She admired his ability to prioritize and calmly make important decisions, and believes these traits will inspire viewers worldwide.
In regard to Naruto's growth Takeuchi was happy with the story and had hoped that Naruto would end up in a relationship with Hinata. Takeuchi was reminded of Naruto's late godfather, Jiraiya, when she read the script. She thought that although Naruto's declaration of love was the most important part of the character's growth, his true nature had not changed at that point. Satisfied with the story, Takeuchi thought that the audience would agree with her view. For the film Boruto: Naruto the Movie, Takeuchi was surprised with how Naruto has grown up ever since she first voiced him, not only in the idea of age or new job but also the fact that he has become a father. As a result, she befriended Yūko Sanpei, voice actress behind Boruto. Takeuchi felt the writing for the adult Naruto was different from his younger days as his mannerism had changed too, joking that she never saw such growth in the story when first voicing him. As a result, she mentions having had some inner complications with how she should show the character's growth.
The producers of the English version of the anime stated that Naruto was the most difficult character to cast, adding that Maile Flanagan "has Naruto down, from the mischievous side, that precocious 12-year-old we learn to love, to the serious side." Flanagan avoided listening to Junko Takeuchi's performance as she did not want to imitate it, stating she wanted to develop her own voice for the character. Her performance has been praised as showing Naruto's brashness and later growth in confidence. In a 2014 interview, Flanagan claimed she had never heard of Naruto before her audition. She looked the show up after being chosen and felt the release of the English dub would be popular. She is recognized more for her work voicing Naruto than from other roles she has done in her career, although some fans did not expect that Naruto would be voiced by a woman. Flanagan and Amanda C. Miller (Boruto) found the two family members similar in nature despite having different backgrounds. Flanagan was surprised by how her character changed across the years but felt he was still the same for her, finding challenging to voice Naruto again when coming back to voice the younger Naruto. In regard to the change of tone, Flanagan was surprised by the fact that the dubbers did not replace her despite Naruto's age but felt it was something common in Japanese series.
## Synopsis
Introduced as a young orphan boy of 12 years with blond, spiky hair and blue eyes, Naruto Uzumaki graduates as a ninja from Konohagakure while bonding with his teacher Iruka Umino. Naruto seeks attention as he was ridiculed during his childhood. To be accepted and respected, he resolves to become Konohagakure's Hokage and surpass all previous leaders, no matter the difficulties. While becoming a ninja, Naruto forms friendships that he initially lacked, linking some of them to family relationships. Although Naruto sometimes finds himself unable to accomplish the tasks he proposes to do, other characters believe that he will be an excellent Hokage because of his positive impact on their lives. As an adult, Naruto claims that the Konohagakure village became his family due to his job of being the new Hokage, something he learned from the Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi. As a result, he initially suffered a poor relationship with his son, Boruto, due to the little time he spends with his bloodline family.
## Appearances
### In Naruto
#### Part I
Naruto is an orphan who has a dangerous fox-like entity known as Kurama the Nine-Tailed Fox sealed within his body by his father, the Fourth Hokage Minato Namikaze, the leader of Konoha's ninja force, at the cost of his own life and that of his wife, Kushina Uzumaki. This possession led to Naruto being ridiculed frequently by the rest of Konoha; being associated with him was considered taboo. As a youth, Naruto makes jokes and plays pranks to attract attention. Desiring what he lacked in his early life, Naruto dreams of becoming a Hokage himself with the hope that it will bring him the villagers' recognition and respect. In an attempt to become a ninja, Naruto is horrified to learn of his Jinchuriki nature, but finds acceptance from his teacher Iruka Umino, whom he views as a father. After learning the powerful Multi-Shadow Clone Jutsu, an ability to create physical copies of the user, Naruto becomes a ninja. He joins a ninja group under the leadership of Kakashi Hatake where he made friends with Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno. These are his classmates who are also assigned to Team 7: Sasuke Uchiha, with whom he has had a rivalry since they first met at the ninja academy, and Sakura Haruno who he has a crush on which is not reciprocated by her as she is infatuated with Sasuke.
While being examined to increase his ninja rank, Naruto meets the legendary ninja Jiraiya and learns how to summon toads to aid him in battle, and to control part of the Nine Tails's chakra energy. The exams are interrupted by the invasion of Konohagakure by the criminal Orochimaru and the ninja of Sunagakure. Naruto defeats the sand village's One Tail Jinchuriki Gaara and convinces him there is a better way to live. Shortly afterward, Naruto discovers the Akatsuki, a criminal organization that seeks to extract the Nine-Tails from his body. Though Jiraiya drives them off during this first meeting, learning its member Itachi is both Sasuke's brother, and the man who killed their family, the Akatsuki still plan to kidnap Naruto. While accompanying Jiraiya to find a new village leader, Naruto also learns the Rasengan (螺旋丸, lit. spiral sphere, English manga: "Spiral Chakra Sphere"), a sphere of chakra for offensive purposes. When Sasuke leaves the village to join Orochimaru's forces to obtain the power to kill Itachi, Naruto on his insistence and promise to Sakura becomes part of a rescue team to retrieve him. Naruto and Sasuke ultimately have a one-on-one battle, and after a close battle, Sasuke comes out as the victor. He, however can not bring himself to kill Naruto and instead leaves. The two go their separate ways, but Naruto does not give up on Sasuke, leaving with Jiraiya for two and half years to prepare himself for his next encounter with Sasuke and the Akatsuki.
#### Part II
After his two and a half years of training, Naruto returns to Konoha (the Leaf Village) and begins to deal more actively with the Akatsuki threat by saving Gaara from their clutches. To fight them, Naruto trains with Kakashi to infuse the Rasengan with his own wind-element chakra, creating the Wind Release: Rasenshuriken (風遁・螺旋手裏剣, Fūton: Rasenshuriken) attack that proves instrumental in the downfall of the Akatsuki member Kakuzu. Despite being targeted by the Akatsuki, Naruto dedicates himself to finding and retrieving Sasuke, who eventually disposes of Orochimaru and starts acting on his vengeance-driven whims. Over time, though resisting the urge to use the creature's power, the Nine Tails's influence over him expands to the point where he begins to lose his rationality as more chakra manifests in the form of tails to the point the Tailed Beast can take control of his body. This ultimately causes him to go on a rampage, destroying everything in his path.
After learning that Jiraiya has been killed by the Akatsuki leader, Pain, Naruto prepares for a future encounter by learning toad-style Senjutsu (仙術, lit. "sage techniques"), a power-enhancing ability involving the gathering of natural energy through stillness, while also perfecting Naruto's Rasenshuriken in the process. When they face off, Naruto is pinned to the ground with iron rods and loses control of the Fox's chakra when his Hinata Hyuga nearly dies protecting him. At that time, Naruto meets his father Minato Namikaze within his subconcious and learns about his status as the Fourth Hokage and him being the one who sealed the Fox so that Naruto could use it to defeat the Akatsuki founder Tobi who was behind the Fox's attack on Konohagakure. With Minato stopping the Fox, Naruto regains control of his body, and defeats Pain. Learning that both are Jiraiya's students, Naruto convinces him to quit Akatsuki, seeking to take Jiraiya's path to create a better ninja world.
When Naruto discovers Sasuke's plan to attack the Leaf Village, he decides to confront him in a battle which could end both their lives should Naruto be unable to save him. He prepares himself for the upcoming fight by becoming a student under the vessel of the Eight-Tails, Killer B, to take full control of Kurama's powers. He succeeds with help from his late mother, Kushina Uzumaki, who placed a chakra imprint of herself within the seal so when the time comes, she could have a chance to see her son again. When Naruto learns that all his comrades are battling Tobi's army to protect him, he takes Killer B to join him in the battle, eventually cooperating with Kurama. As he fights, Naruto meets Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki, the Sage of the Six Paths, who grants him enhanced Senjutsu known as the Six Paths Senjutsu. After he and Sasuke join forces to face both Tobi and Madara who are using the Ten-Tails, they have to seal a bigger threat named Kaguya Ōtsutsuki, who is in her Ten-Tails form. After defeating and sealing Kaguya with the cooperation of the rest of Team 7, Naruto ends up having to fight Sasuke due to their conflicting views regarding the ninja world's future. As both end up losing an arm, Naruto and Sasuke reconcile. He receives a new arm created from the First Hokage's cells later. Years later, Naruto is married to Hinata with whom he has had two children – Boruto and Himawari Uzumaki. He becomes the Seventh Hokage (七代目火影, Nanadaime Hokage) in the epilogue.
### In the Boruto series
In the spin-off manga Naruto: The Seventh Hokage and the Scarlet Spring, Naruto and his allies go to defeat a new Akatsuki organization as Sasuke fears Kaguya's allies might try to attack them. In Boruto: Naruto the Movie (2015), which takes place after the series' epilogue, Naruto's Hokage status strains his relationship with his son Boruto as his duties often kept him from his family. During the ninja examinations, Naruto is abducted by Kaguya's descendants, Momoshiki and Kinshiki, and then saved by his son Boruto, Sasuke, and the Kage, before helping his son to destroy Momoshiki. Across this fight, Naruto and Boruto reconcile. In Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, the manga starts in a distant future where Naruto is implied to be dead or missing in action by an enemy of Boruto, Kawaki. In the anime before Boruto became a ninja, Naruto often made appearances with his new family. In the manga, a younger Kawaki is adopted by Naruto when the teenager becomes a fugitive from the group Kara. Naruto clashes with the members from Kara to protect his children, to which the village fears the Ōtsutsuki clan planning to attack again through Kara's members as well like Boruto and Kawaki who share a cursed mark known as Karma. In the fight against Kara's leader Isshiki Ōtsutsuki, Naruto and Kurama combine their chakra together at the cost of their possible death. In the aftermath, Kurama reveals he was told a lie about this combination and he is the only one to die. As Kurama goes to the afterlife, Naruto continues to fight against the remaining Kara members.
### In light novels
Naruto also appears in the epilogue light novels of the series. In the first one, despite still not having obtained his prosthetic arm, goes on a mission with his friend Sai to capture a dangerous ninja named Garyō. In the second one, he allies with Sunagakure ninja Temari's team to find the missing Shikamaru Nara who made a promise to him to work together once Naruto became the Hokage. He makes a brief appearance in Sakura Hiden where he and Hinata try to aid Sakura from a group of enemies. In Sasuke Hiden, he sends a message to Sasuke, which convinces him to return to Konohagakure. In the final one, Konoha Hiden, Naruto marries Hinata after asking his former mentor, Iruka Umino, to the place of his father for the wedding. A novel by Mirei Miyamoto focuses on Naruto's life as a father. Another novel, Naruto Retsuden, explores Naruto having falling to an illness as a result of relying on Kurama's chakra across his entire life.
### In other media
As the series' title character, Naruto appears in every movie in the series. He typically appears as the lead character on a mission with comrades from Konohagakure. Naruto: Shippūden the Movie marks the first appearance of Naruto in his Part II form. In Road to Ninja: Naruto the Movie, an alternate version of the character named Menma appears as the main antagonist of the film.
In The Last: Naruto the Movie, which takes place after the events of the series, Naruto faces Toneri Otsutsuki; at the movie's climax, Naruto and Hinata enter a relationship that eventually leads to their marriage. Kishimoto, the film's chief story supervisor, admitted that he was embarrassed writing romance scenes in the series. However, upon watching Naruto and Hinata share their first kiss, he felt a mixture of satisfaction and sadness due to the two characters' growth since Naruto's beginning; they had become like his own children.
Naruto also appears in all four OVAs produced for the series: helping his friend Konohamaru Sarutobi find a four-leaf clover in the first, escorting a ninja to his village and fighting the criminal who stole the village's "Hero's Water" in the second, participating in a tournament in the third, and working with Team 7 in the fourth. He appears as a supporting character in the spin-off manga titled Rock Lee and his Ninja Pals where his fellow Konohagakure ninja Rock Lee is the main character.
Naruto is a playable character in the Naruto video games. In several titles, it is possible to access a special version of him enhanced with the power from the Nine-Tailed Fox. In several games from the Ultimate Ninja series he is playable with his own versions of Rock Lee and Might Guy's techniques while wearing their costumes. Naruto Shippūden: Gekitou Ninja Taisen EX marks the first appearance of Naruto in his Part II form in a video game. For the series' 10th anniversary, Masashi Kishimoto drew an illustration of Naruto as Hokage. This portrayal of Naruto later appears as a secret character in the game Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2. Naruto also appears in the iOS and Android mobile game Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Blazing. He appears in several crossover video games that feature Naruto fighting against characters from other manga; these games include: Battle Stadium D.O.N, Jump Super Stars, and Jump Ultimate Stars. A Naruto avatar made a guest appearance in the MMORPG Second Life for a Jump Festa promotion titled Jumpland@Second Life. In Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z Naruto's costume appears as an alternate costume for Goku. Outside Naruto, the character also appeared in the first popularity poll from the manga My Hero Academia by Kōhei Horikoshi. When the Naruto manga ended, Eiichiro Oda drew a cover of a One Piece manga chapter where Naruto is seen eating with the One Piece characters. Naruto was added to Fortnite Battle Royale in November 2021.
Naruto also makes an appearance in Live Spectacle Naruto (2015) and Live Spectacle Naruto: Song of the Akatsuki (2017), two stage plays based on the manga. Naruto is played by Koudai Matsouka.
## Reception
### Characterization and themes
Naruto's character has received mostly positive critical response in printed and online publications. Praise was given by Joseph Szadkowski of The Washington Times who noted that Naruto "has become a pop-culture sensation." Naruto's character was analyzed by GameSpot's Joe Dodson who noted that despite having an "ideal" life, he still suffered from severe isolation, although he was praised for his optimistic personality by Carl Kimlinger of Anime News Network (ANN). Writers for Mania Entertainment labeled him a "good lead character" with good overall development despite certain problems at the beginning. Christina Carpenter of T.H.E.M. Anime Reviews disagreed with other writers, noting that while Naruto is a "likable enough scamp", his type of character has been done before in many anime and manga series. Yukari Fujimoto, a professor at Meiji University, sees Naruto himself as the manga's weakness. Manga author Nobuhiro Watsuki compared Naruto with Himura Kenshin and Monkey D. Luffy due to how they follow the ideals of not killing their oppponents.
Writing for Popular Culture in Counseling, Psychotherapy, and Play-Based Interventions, Lawrence Rubin states that while Naruto has an optimistic and hyperactive personality, the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox (Kurama) within his body symbolizes his negative emotions. He comments that Naruto has a malevolent attitude when dealing with intense conflicts and emotions. He also states that Naruto would use Kurama's chakra for battles he can not handle with his own chakra. Rubin further notes that the more Naruto uses Kurama's chakra, the more he puts his comrades and himself in danger. Rubin feels the reason Naruto is a troublemaker is because some villagers avoid him and others mistreat him. He states that children growing up in the real world who have development issues can relate to his character. Rubin states that the search for acceptance, and being acknowledged by his peers is what motivates Naruto to keep going until he reaches his life's goal, becoming the Hokage. Rubin feels that Naruto's fights with enemies who try to bring harm to the Leaf Village further motivate him to become a powerful shinobi, and a "complete and mature person." Rubin concludes that Naruto's character development is similar to that of a modern American hero, the type who accidentally becomes better during a series and is able to build or restore peace.
Christopher A. Born, writing for DOAJ journal ASIANetwork Exchange, regards Naruto as a complex post-modern hero, showing "great heart." From Naruto's beginning, Born comments that the character is a nuisance, suggesting Naruto is the very definition of the word, given how he is characterized in the series, including how he interacts, and his behavior. Born argues that Naruto as a whole shows Confucian values, and that Naruto himself unsettles harmony in society. Amy Plumb, a PhD candidate at Macquarie University, states that Kishimoto used the mythology of the kitsune for Naruto's development throughout the series. She notes that at the beginning of the series, Naruto was a prankster and always causing trouble, the same as the kitsune. Plumb describes the Kyuubi (Demon) seal on Naruto's stomach as a catalyst for how he develops. Writing for Manga's Cultural Crossroads, Omote Tomoyuki compliments Naruto's character, saying that he has great ambition to achieve a tragic destiny. He comments how the character has matured over the course of the series, stating how after he became a shinobi, he had let go of his childish ways that happened in the beginning of the series, and how he rarely joked around in Part II of the series when he became a teenager. Franziska Ehmcke, professor of Japanese studies at Cologne University, theorized that Naruto was named after whirlpools of the sea landscape of the Awa no Naruto, and compared his behavior to that natural feature, as both figures have uncontrollable energy within them. Mike Hale compared Naruto to Buffy Summers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, praising the series' portrayal of childhood loneliness. Rik Spanjers regards Naruto's childishness as one of his strengths because it gives him a well of resoluteness from which to draw on in his goal to end the ninja wars. A study which looked at if readers could predict character types based on physical cues regarded Naruto as an ENFP (Myers-Briggs) character type, impulsive and spontaneous, finding a foil in the ISTJ-type Sasuke.
Analysing Naruto's coming-of-age story, The Lawrentian found that Naruto's development embodies the idea of Bildungsroman, the idea of how importance is Naruto's growth across the narrative needed to move on the arc. Due to lacking parenting as a result of his parents' age during his birth, Naruto's personality starts fragile. Unaware of them, Naruto seeks to accomplish his mother's wish of becoming a hero and leader of the village, the Hokage. While initially portrayed as a weak character, Naruto finds strength in his mentors Kakashi and Jiraiya, another element common element in Bildungsroman as well as his connections with Sakura and Sasuke. As a result of losing Jiraiya, Naruto seeks to accomplish his mentor's wish of ending wars and the cycling of hatred, making Kishimoto capable of embodying the character more with the reader while maturing in the process. As a result, The Lawrentian finds that Naruto's character fills the concept of Bildungsroman, something other fictional characters fail to accomplish.
Tejal Suhas Bagwe from Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Masters of Arts in English describes Jiraya's death as the "loss of innocence" the Naruto goes through paralleling his life with Gaara, Sasuke or Madara. However, unlike these three characters who seek revenge and chaos for their losses, Naruto instead chooses another path derivative from these types of narrative, becoming more unique. Another aspect noted by the writer in regard to Naruto's character is how he becomes Kurama's companion despite the creature bearing hatred towards mankind for being used, resulting into multiple references to Japanese mythology based on its name and the new skills Naruto acquires when befriending the fox. Similarly, Anime News Network stated that thanks to Naruto's newfound pacifism when dealing with his quest of revenge and the rejection to violence, the story managed to become a "masterpiece".
#### Relationships
His relationships with the other characters was described as appealing by IGN's Charles White and Jason Van Horn, most notably through his rivalry with Sasuke, as it shows "signs of maturity" in Naruto. However, his wish to retrieve Sasuke after the end of Part I was criticised because of his subsequent suffering. In a poll by Japanese pollster Charapedia, Naruto and Sasuke's rivalry reached the top place. Jacob Hope Chapman of ANN listed Naruto and Sasuke as one of "Anime's Fiercest Frenemies" considering their similarities and how they become friends after a mortal battle. His romantic involvement with other characters led to disputes as there were fans in favour of his relationship with Sakura Haruno, while others preferred Hinata Hyuga. His romance with Hinata in the film The Last earned multiple positive reactions from the media. Some critics wished The Last could be condensed so that their relationship was the focus of the movie. On a similar note, both McNulty and Andy Hanley from UK Anime Network enjoyed Naruto's relationship with his son Boruto due to the differences in their childhoods and how that becomes the focus of the film Boruto. His role in Boruto: Naruto Next Generations was praised for his more mature personality as well as his relationship with the young Kawaki. Leroy Douresseaux expected Kawaki will have a major impact in Boruto's life in regard to his way of fighting.
#### Combat
Kimlinger of Anime News Network said that while Naruto's initial fight scenes are lacking conviction when compared to others, his encounter with Gaara is one of his best moments because its tactics surpassed most shōnen stereotypes. ANN's Theron Martin and Mania Entertainment's Justin Rich made similar comments. The character's final fight against Sasuke at the end of Part I attracted similar responses, due to the fighting styles employed, and the character development resulting from their rivalry. The enormous physical changes caused by the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox have also been the focus of critics, as Naruto's loss of control causes him to become a bigger threat to his loved ones than other series' antagonists. Carlo Santos of ANN commented on the character's growth in Part II, specifically his fight against Pain in which Naruto's comments on peace, and the means by which it is achieved, touch on philosophical themes never seen in a shōnen series. Chris Beveridge of Mania Entertainment noted a change in Naruto's attitude as he acts calmly and more seriously than in previous story arcs. Naruto's new Senjutsu style was praised, as was his careful preparation for the fight against Pain, which resulted in a detailed display of his skills. In regard to Naruto's fight against Sasuke, writers once again found depth in the handling of the rivals while also bringing a satisfying ending to the series. Amy McNulty of ANN also praised their final fight, expressing amazement at how brutal some scenes were since Naruto had become more of a pacifist than previous story arcs.
### Popularity
In every official Weekly Shōnen Jump popularity poll of the series, Naruto ranks in the top five characters and, as of the beginning of 2012, has been in first place twice. In the 2011 poll, Naruto was once again in first place. In 2014, IGN ranked him as the second best Naruto character when the series ended, stating that "Naruto's strongest trait is his unshakable persistence, and although he is a flawed and somewhat limited character by himself, that stubborn optimism of his makes for some great storytelling with other characters." In a Japanese TV special from August 2017, Naruto was voted as the 13th "strongest hero" from the Heisei Era. Additionally, in 2017 Charapedia poll, Naruto ranked 9th most ideal Prime Minister in anime series. In a 2018 poll from Shonen Jump, Naruto was also voted as the 10th most powerful character in the magazine's history. In poll from 2021, Naruto was voted as the second best character from Boruto: Naruto Next Generations behind his son. In the Crunchyroll Awards from 2022, Naruto was nominated for "Best Fight" against Isshiki in Boruto: Naruto Next Generations.
Merchandise has been modeled after Naruto, including keychains, and action figures. In the 2009 Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation Awards, Junko Takeuchi won Best Voice Actress (Japanese) for her work as Naruto. Naruto was placed sixth in IGN's Top 25 Anime Characters of All Time with writer Chris Mackenzie stating that although: "Naruto actually isn't the most popular character in his own series most of the time," he is "the engine that powers the franchise." In the 2011 Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition, he was noted as the twenty-ninth best character appearing in video games.
While working for CyberConnect2 in the making of the .hack games, character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto used Naruto as a model for .hack's protagonist, Kite. Shortly afterwards, CyberConnect2 started developing the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja games although Sadamoto recalls he was unaware of this fact. Another character inspired by Naruto is Yuji Itadori from Jujutsu Kaisen; its author, Gege Akutami, enjoyed the story of how Naruto deals with a demon-like creature inside his body and decided to give Itadori a similar aura when eating the remains of the demon Ryomen Sukuna whom he carries a poor relationship. CyberConnect2 CEO Hiroshi Matsuyama also participated in the 2012 Paris Marathon while cosplaying as Naruto to celebrating the release of a new video game. Matsuyama also said that Naruto's Rasenshuriken was his favorite technique in the entire series due to its sounds as well as how the character executes it. Upon seeing the final fight between Naruto and Sasuke in Storm 4, Matsuyama felt emotional over seeing the final fight between Naruto and Sasuke. Matsuyama also made his own sketch of two fighters, aiming to put them the video game, promising gamers they would enjoy the emotions delivered by the fight. Matsuyama further reflected the anime's 133rd episode to be one of his favorites not only for the action sequences between Naruto and Sasuke but also the emotional value displayed. In a poll from Anime! Anime!, Naruto and Sasuke as one of the best rivals turned into allies.
#### Cultural impact
Olympic medalist Usain Bolt expressed his love for Naruto and the Naruto series several times through Instagram posts. The Shanghai New World mall made an announcement in the beginning of 2019 that it plans on opening an indoor theme park on its 11th floor which will be called "Naruto World". The theme park will be 7,000 square meters in size and will be based on the Naruto manga. An officially authorized Ichiraku Ramen ramen noodle shop, based on Ichiraku Ramen from the anime, opened up in Shanghai's Global Harbor shopping mall in 2019. In June 2019, a life-size statue designed by Testuya Nishio was developed for display at the Wonder Festival 2019 Shanghai event. For the 2020 Summer Olympics, Naruto's image is being used as a character to represent the event.
Naruto has had an influence on hip-hop music. Many rappers, both underground and mainstream have sprinkled Naruto references throughout their songs. Rapper Ski Mask the Slump God starts off the first verse of his song Catch me Outside with a reference to Naruto and his ninetails mode. Some artists go so far as revolving the theme of their entire album around Naruto, such as Dave's album Six Paths. in Dave's song Wanna Know (Remix) the track art is a direct reference to Naruto. It features the title in the Naruto font and color scheme. Singer Diana Garnet expressed her pleasure at recording one of the ending theme songs for the animated series of Naruto Shippuden stating that not only she has been a fan of the series ever since she was younger, but was also motivated by Naruto's character because of his determination not to give up no matter what challenge he faced. Similarly, in an analysis involving stereotypes of African Americans created by the British newspaper The Guardian, Naruto's character is viewed as relatable character due to prejudicial treatment the character receives early in the series. As a result, Naruto's life achievements he makes across the narrative, ending to his portrayal as the Seventh Hokage are seen as inspiring by the audience.
Allega Frank from Polygon noted that during the start of both the manga and anime Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, multiple fans were worried in regard to a flashforward; in this sequence an older Boruto is facing an enemy named Kawaki who implies Naruto might be dead so his fate left them worried.
|
1,395,495 |
Burning Rangers
| 1,160,791,375 |
1998 video game
|
[
"1998 video games",
"Sega Saturn games",
"Sega Saturn-only games",
"Sonic Team games",
"Third-person shooters",
"Video games about firefighting",
"Video games developed in Japan",
"Video games produced by Yuji Naka",
"Video games scored by Fumie Kumatani",
"Video games scored by Masaru Setsumaru",
"Video games scored by Naofumi Hataya",
"Video games set in New Zealand"
] |
is a 1998 action game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Sega Saturn. Burning Rangers is set in a futuristic society in which fire is the remaining danger. Players control one of an elite group of firefighters, the Burning Rangers, who extinguish fires and rescue civilians in burning buildings. Most of the tasks the players complete are centred around collecting energy crystals to transport civilians to safety. In lieu of an in-game map, Burning Rangers features a voice navigation system which directs players through corridors.
Development began shortly after the release of Christmas Nights in November 1996. Producer Yuji Naka wanted to create a game which involved saving people rather than killing them. Sonic Team chose to connect the game with firefighting as they thought it was an effective way of having players identify with heroism. It was released in Japan in February 1998, and later that year in North America in May and in Europe in June. Burning Rangers received mostly positive reviews. Critics unanimously commended the game's soundtrack and audio, with the voice navigation system receiving particular praise. The response to the graphics was mixed, with some critics feeling they were among the best on the Saturn, although it was noted for its poor collision detection and occasional glitching. The game was among the final seven Saturn games released in America.
## Gameplay
Burning Rangers is a third-person shooter game in which players complete missions involving extinguishing fires and rescuing civilians. The game is set in a futuristic society in which fire is the only danger, and stars an elite group of firefighters, the Burning Rangers. The player assumes control of one of two apprentice rangers, and completes tasks across the game's four levels. The primary objective is to transport stranded civilians from burning buildings, by collecting energy crystals dropped from extinguished fires. A minimum of five crystals are needed to transport a civilian to safety; the player receives an energy shield if they use ten. The crystals function similarly to rings in Sonic the Hedgehog games: possessing at least one crystal allows a player to survive damage from an enemy or fire. Being hit once scatters the player's crystals and renders them vulnerable to death.
The game's four stages take place in a power plant, underwater habitat, space station and spaceship in zero gravity, respectively. Every level is an interior space, and consists of multi-storied rooms and corridors divided by interlocking lifts and doors. The player is equipped with a jet pack to reach higher areas and perform acrobatic maneuvers such as backflips and rolls. They can also swim and dive underwater. Robots attack the player with shooting flames should they come into contact. Each stage ends with a boss battle, ranging from fire-breathing flowers to robotic fish. As in many Sonic Team games, upon completion of a stage players are graded on their performance.
Since there is no in-game map, the player character relies on a voice navigation system to find their way. The mission controller gives the player directions depending on their location, which can be repeated at any time. At the end of each stage, the player receives a rank based on their score and success at putting out fires, with "S" the highest and "D" the lowest. Once the game is completed, a random generator mode is unlocked which mixes up the order of corridors in the game's four stages, with a potential total of 3,125 unique routes.
## Development
### Concept and planning
Development of Burning Rangers started around November 1996, after the release of Sonic Team's previous game Christmas Nights (a Christmas-themed demo for Nights into Dreams). The development team of 31 (out of Sonic Team's staff of about 50) was directed by Naoto Ohshima and lead designer Takao Miyoshi. The rest of the team consisted of three game planners, six programmers, eighteen designers, and two sound producers, most of whom had worked on Nights into Dreams. In addition to the Sonic Team staff, Sega allotted a full consumer software team to the project.
The concept originated with the idea of rescuing people as opposed to killing them, which was an element that producer Yuji Naka felt was too common in contemporary video games. The team chose firefighters as they felt that fire was the most appropriate way to create fear and tension. In a retrospective interview, Ohshima said that many of the things done by firefighters—along with rescuing people—were "the very essence of a Sonic Team game", and that they recognised that a firefighter was a hero with whom people could identify. The team wanted to make a game with a rescue theme as Naka thought there were few games based on that concept. According to Takeo Miyoshi, "Our first inspiration came from the explosion and building destruction scenes of Hollywood movies. We just wanted to describe the heroism of lifesaving in that loud, explosive type of setting." The developers wanted to design a future that was "clean and beautiful", with sustainable energy, but where disasters still could occur, and only heroes could protect people from them. The designers envisioned that a futuristic firefighter would be acrobatic and dexterous to reach places where people were trapped.
According to Miyoshi, Burning Rangers was conceived as an online game for four players, but became a single-player game when the team faced network problems; Sonic Team revisited the concept with the Dreamcast game Phantasy Star Online (2000). Although the target audience of Burning Rangers was people who enjoyed action games, the developers also wanted to attract fans of other Sonic Team games. Ohshima stressed that he was aiming at a wider audience and not the type of person who only played Sonic the Hedgehog, adding that "players should recognise the Sonic Team touch immediately" with Burning Rangers. The working title was Firefighter, but it was dropped as the team wanted a "cooler" sounding name. Naka felt that "burning" had a "go for it!" connotation in Japanese, and fit with the disaster-rescue theme. He was initially unsure about having "ranger" in the title as he felt that a ranger referred to park rangers in western culture. The team thought that the image of a "ranger" also brought to mind the Power Rangers franchise, and after consulting speakers of other languages, Burning Rangers was chosen as the game's name.
### Design
During the early stages of development, some members of Sonic Team visited Hong Kong shortly before the transfer of British sovereignty, in hopes of finding inspiration for the game's stages. Some staff also travelled to Universal Studios in California to experience the Backdraft attraction to learn how to generate a similar sensation in the game. The team also visited a special firefighting event in Tokyo where they witnessed robots putting out fires, and were surprised to see how it compared to their image of the game's futuristic setting. Naka recalled that the robot had special infrared sensors and a camera which could see through fires, and was impressed by their techniques. According to Naka, the team did not ask for advice from professional firefighters during development, partly due to the concern that their game would not be well received, as Naka thought they would have said that real firefighting "wasn't that simple". At the Tokyo Games Show, a real firefighter, however, did comment that the character's costumes were too thin. Naka reflected that if they had made any of game elements highly realistic, the contrast between those elements and the clearly fictional elements would have been exaggerated.
The game uses the same engine as Nights into Dreams. When Sonic Team developed Nights into Dreams, they were new to programming for the Sega Saturn, and when the engine was re-used for Burning Rangers they were able to make it faster and more capable. To design the stages and environments, Miyoshi outlined the corridors first, then placed fires in them before adding light effects to simulate the appearance of fire. Miyoshi thought that the team had over-reached in designing the game's detailed stages, saying: "everyone in the team wanted to put so much into the game that we only completed about half of what we wanted to do." Naka said that although they designed only four stages, they ensured that the player's experience would increase progressively throughout the game because each stage was very large. The developers initially used motion capture technology to capture data for poses and animation, but Naka soon discovered that it was impossible to get the results the team wanted, as it was unfeasible for people to perform the special motions they needed. The developers resorted to creating the animation by hand, and only used the motion capture data for the player characters' walking animations.
There were many difficulties in developing the game's voice navigation system, as no verbal dialogue had featured in a Sonic Team game before. Naka asserted the team had rethought all ideas of what should be included in the game during development, and the idea of not including any on-screen maps but rather relying on a voice navigation system was "there from the start". The team tested different forms of navigation systems and picked the best. Although previous Saturn games which used voice navigation systems (e.g. Solar Eclipse) did so in conjunction with background music, they felt that background music would detract from the sensation of being present in the game. Miyoshi thought that the only audio accompaniment being the sound effects of fire and walls creaking would produce immersion.
The team originally wanted to record the game in six languages, but found the volume of work too difficult, reverting to English and Japanese instead. Before selecting voice actors, Miyoshi designed the characters and built up a mental image of what they would sound like. Sonic Team hired several voice actors who had appeared in American television programmes. According to Miyoshi, all audio work was re-written several times throughout development; he considered it to have "evolved" alongside the team's production of the game itself.
Designing the game's fire effects proved to be difficult due to the Saturn's rendering limitations. Miyoshi explained that during testing stages, the team spent a lot of time checking how well they would be able to create fires, which was a pivotal aspect of the game. In the first test ROM they produced, Miyoshi discovered that they were able to achieve "some quite beautiful" fire effects by disguising blocky sprites with various degrees of transparency and lighting effects. At the time, few games used polygons in 3D spaces for acrobatic and exploration-orientated gameplay.
Burning Rangers' animated cutscenes were produced by TMS Entertainment and its subsidiary, Seoul Movie, who had also produced the Virtua Fighter anime and the Man of the Year short on Sonic Jam for Sega, as well as cinematic feature films such as Akira and Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland. The company has produced content for Sega since it was subsidised as TMS-Kyokuchi. The game's anime cutscenes were made with a digital process rather than traditional ink and paint, as this made them easier to compress onto a CD-ROM. According to Miyoshi, the entire development of the game spanned around a year and a half, although the programming took less than a year.
Sega of Japan planned for Burning Rangers to be the headliner of their 1997 Christmas season releases, but the game was not ready for release in Japan until early 1998.
The game was among the final seven Saturn games released in America. Each of the main developers reflected on what they were proudest of: Naka expressed relief that Sonic Team were able to "get a good overall balance" for the game, whereas Miyoshi thought that the voice navigation system was the strongest aspect. Main programmer Takuya Matsumoto was delighted to see it released before the Saturn's discontinuation, saying "the fact that we've been able to push the Saturn this far is enough for me to die happy". Burning Rangers was released exactly nine months before the Japanese release of Sega's next console, the Dreamcast. IGN's Levi Buchanan characterized the release as an example of the Saturn's "ignominious send-off", writing that "sunset Saturn games like Panzer Dragoon Saga and Burning Rangers demanded far better launches. The way these games were slipped into retail with zero fanfare and low circulation was insulting to both hard-working developers and Sega fans."
## Reception
Reviewers praised Burning Rangers' colourful lighting effects, but criticised its collision detection and occasional graphical glitching. Lee Nutter of the British Sega Saturn Magazine enjoyed the detailed characters and described the lighting effects as excellent, although he, along with IGN's Levi Buchanan, noticed that the visuals had minor problems. Sonia Herranz from Hobby Consolas and Ed Lomas from Computer and Video Games commended the character's designs, colourful lighting and detailed visuals, though Lomas declared that the graphics "[did] often look a mess".
The game's poor collision detection was unanimously criticised by reviewers, and Colin Williamson of AllGame also felt that the game's prominent polygon errors were a problem, though he appreciated the attractive lighting effects. Some critics compared the game's visuals to those of Nights into Dreams. Ryan MacDonald commented that it had a similar look and feel to that game's 3D environment, and that Burning Rangers' polygonal graphics were "some of the best [he had] ever seen". Mike Weigand from GamePro considered that the majority of the game featured "drab" stage designs, and in a retrospective review GMR's Dave Smith thought that the game "looks like hell" and had not aged as well as Nights into Dreams, and that its engine could not handle a free-roaming environment without harming its visuals. Weigand felt the game's 3D environment was a mix of both Tomb Raider and Nights into Dreams.
The soundtrack and sound effects received praise, though reviewers recognised that the game lacked music to create tension. Buchanan appreciated that the game contained a few tracks of "excellent" Sega-style music, with his favourite being the theme song. Although Williamson, Weigand, and Nutter noted the lack of in-game music, they lauded the vocal tracks, voice samples, and sound clues. Most reviewers questioned the quality of the dialogue. Weigand felt it was "lame", and Smith said the game contained "some of the worst voice acting ever produced by human lungs". Herranz had difficulty understanding crucial dialogue since the audio was only recorded in English, although she admitted that the voice guidance system was an innovative element. Williamson praised Sega's decision to produce full voiced dialogue as opposed to subtitling original Japanese dialogue, and also praised its "good-to-excellent" English voice acting, though it was "no Shakespeare".
Reviewers had mixed opinions on the control scheme and use of the Saturn 3D controller. Nutter noted that the controls were a mix of those featured in Tomb Raider and Nights into Dreams, praising the use of the analogue stick to perform complex manoeuvres. A reviewer from the Japanese Sega Saturn Magazine felt the game was more comfortable with an analogue pad as opposed to the default Saturn controller, and Williamson similarly thought the control scheme was "great" when used with an analogue pad. In contrast, Weigand criticised the lack of a custom configuration and described the controls as "squirrelly", even with the analogue controller. A couple of reviewers criticised the game's short length and lack of difficulty. Nutter suggested that accomplished players would have it "clocked" in a couple of days and felt it did not take much effort to complete the four levels, whilst Buchanan said it was "too short for its own good", a problem made worse by its enjoyable gameplay.
|
31,364,915 |
Surrogate's Courthouse
| 1,166,355,750 |
Historic courthouse in Manhattan, New York
|
[
"Archives in the United States",
"Beaux-Arts architecture in New York City",
"Civic Center, Manhattan",
"Courthouses in New York (state)",
"Government buildings completed in 1907",
"Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Manhattan",
"National Historic Landmarks in Manhattan",
"New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan",
"New York City interior landmarks",
"New York State Register of Historic Places in New York County",
"Outdoor sculptures in Manhattan"
] |
The Surrogate's Courthouse (also the Hall of Records and 31 Chambers Street) is a historic building at the northwest corner of Chambers and Centre Streets in the Civic Center of Manhattan in New York City. Completed in 1907, it was designed in the Beaux Arts style. John Rochester Thomas created the original plans while Arthur J. Horgan and Vincent J. Slattery oversaw the building's completion. The building faces City Hall Park and the Tweed Courthouse to the south and the Manhattan Municipal Building to the east.
The Surrogate's Courthouse is a seven-story steel-framed structure with a granite facade and elaborate marble interiors. The fireproof frame was designed to safely accommodate the city's paper records. The exterior is decorated with 54 sculptures by Philip Martiny and Henry Kirke Bush-Brown, as well as three-story colonnades with Corinthian columns along Chambers and Reade Streets. The basement houses the New York City Municipal Archives. The fifth floor contains the New York Surrogate's Court for New York County, which handles probate and estate proceedings for the New York State Unified Court System.
The Hall of Records building had been planned since the late 19th century to replace an outdated building in City Hall Park; plans for the current building were approved in 1897. Construction took place between 1899 and 1907, having been subject to several delays because of controversies over funding, sculptures, and Horgan and Slattery's involvement after Thomas's death in 1901. Renamed the Surrogate's Courthouse in 1962, the building has undergone few alterations over the years. The Surrogate's Courthouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark, and its facade and interior are both New York City designated landmarks.
## Site
The Surrogate's Courthouse is in the Civic Center neighborhood of Manhattan, just north of City Hall Park. It occupies an entire city block bounded by Chambers Street to the south, Centre Street to the east, Reade Street to the north, and Elk Street to the west. Other nearby buildings and locations include 49 Chambers and 280 Broadway to the west; the Ted Weiss Federal Building and African Burial Ground National Monument to the northwest; the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse to the northeast; the Manhattan Municipal Building to the east; and the Tweed Courthouse and New York City Hall to the southwest, within City Hall Park.
The ground slopes downward from south to north; the original ground elevation was below Reade Street and close to sea level. The surrounding area contains evidence of the interments of individuals, mostly of African descent, but the foundations of the Surrogate's Courthouse may have destroyed any remnants of corpses on the site. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Surrogate's Courthouse site was on a hill called "Pot Baker's" or "Potter's Hill", so named because several families in the pottery industry lived or worked nearby. The site also included a water reservoir built of stone and maintained by the Manhattan Company from 1799 until 1842, when the Croton Aqueduct opened. In the mid-19th century, the site contained small loft buildings. Before the completion of Elk Street in 1901, the site was part of a larger city block bounded by Broadway and Chambers, Centre, and Reade Streets.
## Architecture
The Surrogate's Courthouse was designed in the Beaux-Arts style, John Rochester Thomas being the original architect. After Thomas's death in 1901, Arthur J. Horgan and Vincent J. Slattery oversaw the completion of the plan. Their relatively unknown firm had connections to the politically powerful Tammany Hall organization of the time. The final design largely conforms to Thomas's original plans, though Horgan and Slattery were mostly responsible for the sculptural ornamentation. Fay Kellogg, who designed the prominent double staircase in the building's lobby, helped prepare plans for the Hall of Records. The building has undergone relatively few alterations since its completion in 1907.
The Surrogate's Courthouse's seven-story granite facade wraps around the building's structural frame, while the interiors are elaborately designed in marble. The building was designed to be fireproof to house the city's paper records safely. The interior spaces are popular with film and television production companies and have been used in many commercials, TV series, and movies. Besides housing the Surrogate's Court for New York County, the building contains the New York City Municipal Archives, the New York City Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS)'s City Hall Library, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
### Facade
The facade of the Surrogate's Courthouse consists mostly of granite from Hallowell, Maine, with ashlar masonry. It is split vertically into a two-story rusticated base, a three-story midsection, a sixth story and a seventh story in a mansard roof. The northern and southern elevations are split vertically into five bays, with multiple windows on each floor in the center bays, while the western and eastern elevations are split into three bays.
The central portion of the southern (Chambers Street) elevation contains three double-height arched doorways, each of which contains a pair of doors and a window with bronze grilles. The doorways are flanked by granite columns, each cast from a single granite slab and topped by modified composite capitals. This entrance was wainscoted entirely with Siena marble at the building's completion. There are side entrances at the center of the western elevation on Elk Street, from which there is a small flight of steps, as well as at the center of the eastern elevation on Centre Street. The Reade Street elevation contains a wheelchair-accessible entrance.
On the northern and southern elevations, the central five windows of the third through fifth stories are flanked by a projecting Corinthian style colonnade with four single columns between two paired columns at either end. On all four elevations, the outermost bays are designed with window openings on the second, third, fifth, and sixth stories, and sculptures around porthole windows on the fourth story. The remaining six windows on the north and south, and the center nine windows on the west and east, are slightly recessed behind the end bays, with different window designs on each story. An entablature and a cornice runs above the fifth story, and another cornice runs above the sixth story. The seventh story contains dormer windows with carved hoods, projecting from the mansard roof in all except the end bays.
#### Sculptures
The exterior features fifty-four sculptures by Philip Martiny and Henry Kirke Bush-Brown. Martiny was hired for the main sculptural groups, while Bush-Brown designed the smaller sculptures. Like the rest of the facade, the statues were carved from Hallowell granite.
On Chambers and Centre Streets, Martiny carved 24 standing figures at the sixth floor, under the cornice. These sculptures depict eminent figures from the city's past, including Peter Stuyvesant, DeWitt Clinton, David Pietersen De Vries, and mayors Caleb Heathcote, Abram Stevens Hewitt, Philip Hone, Cadwallader David Colden and James Duane. Martiny also designed the groups of sculptures flanking the Chambers and Centre Street entrances. Three sculptures flank the Chambers Street entrance, while two originally flanked the Centre Street entrance. The Centre Street sculptures, depicting Justice and Authority, were removed in 1959; they were relocated to the New York County Courthouse.
On all four sides, Bush-Brown designed groups of allegorical figures for the roof. The figures were arranged in standing, sitting, or reclining postures. Figures depicting Heritage and Maternity are at the base of the central dormer on Chambers Street. Above the central Chambers Street dormer is a clock with a dial measuring 4 feet (1.2 m) across, flanked by figures of Poetry and Philosophy and topped by four cherubs and two caryatids. A similar dormer at the center of Reade Street has figures depicting Instruction, Study, Law, and History. The central Centre Street dormer has figures of Inscription and Custody and the central dormer on the west side has Industry and Commerce.
### Interior
#### Entrance vestibules
The rectangular entrance vestibule from Chambers Street contains rusticated yellow marble-clad walls. Just opposite the arched entryways is an arcade with decorative cartouches. Double doors made of mahogany are set within marble doorways at either end of the vestibule. The German sculptor Albert Weinert created two marble sculptural groups, one above each set of doorways; these depict the 1624 purchase of Manhattan Island and the 1898 creation of the City of Greater New York. The vestibule's elliptical ceiling contains mosaic murals and panels created by William de Leftwich Dodge. Of the four mosaic murals, three depict the probate process (in reference to the Surrogates' Court) and the other depicts the continuity of records. The ceiling's triangular mosaic panels depict Egyptian and Greek motifs along with zodiac signs. The mosaic tiles are mostly colored red, green, and blue on dull gold. The vestibule also contains a bronze chandelier, ornamental bronze radiators and a patterned marble floor.
Smaller entrance vestibules also exist on the west and east ends of the Surrogate's Courthouse; they are largely similar, except for the steps outside the west vestibule. Decorative bronze-and-glass enclosures frame the doorways, while there are mosaic lunettes over the two side doors from the vestibules. In the elliptical ceiling vaults of these vestibules, Dodge also designed mosaics set in glass. The mosaics are generally blue and gold but have green and rose accent strips. The ceiling is divided into several panels with decorative elements like garlands, urns, and acanthus scrolls.
#### Lobby and lower stories
The entrance vestibules lead to the main lobby, a triple-story space whose design was inspired by that of the Palais Garnier, the opera house of the Paris Opera. Yellow Sienna marble was used throughout the lobby. Surrounding the lobby space on the first floor is an arched gallery with rusticated piers, scrolled keystones, red marble roundels, and garlands linking the roundels and keystones. A decorative frieze runs above the first floor gallery. A marble double staircase with balustrade flanks the western entrance archway on the first floor, ascending two flights to an intermediate landing, where a single flight leads to the second floor. On the second floor is a colonnaded gallery containing engaged columns with Ionic-style capitals. The tops of the lobby walls contain decorative entablatures. The ceiling has a bronze elliptical arched vault reaching the height of the third floor. Within the arched vault is a gable-shaped skylight measuring 40 by 60 feet (12 by 18 m).
The hallways on the first floor contain marble walls and multicolored patterned marble floors. The passageways contain groin vaulted ceilings with chandeliers. There are recessed mahogany double-doors leading to the offices, as well as red marble roundels above each doorway. Service functions, such as fuse boxes, are contained within bronze boxes. The second-floor gallery's arches divide the gallery into bays. Within each bay, there are shallow, domed ceilings supported on decorative pendentives, and a cornice runs beneath each dome. On the walls, there are arched openings with mahogany double doors. Above the double staircase in the lobby, a balustraded staircase rises from the second-floor gallery to the third floor, with an intermediate landing above the double stairway.
#### Upper stories
The third through fifth floors are largely similar in plan and surround an interior light court above the lobby. These floors are connected by a staircase similar in design to the one connecting the second and third floors. The floor surfaces of the third through fifth stories are made of mosaic tile, and the walls consist of gray-veined marble panels. Each story contains different decorative designs on the frames surrounding the doorways and on the openings facing the light court.
The two Surrogates' courtrooms, on the fifth floor, handle probate and estate proceedings for the New York State Unified Court System. Part of the original design, the rooms contain similar layouts with minor differences in decorative detail. The courtrooms have gilded, paneled plaster ceilings with decorative reliefs and ornate chandeliers. The north courtroom is finished in Santo Domingo mahogany and has four carved panels signifying wisdom, truth, civilization and degradation, as well as six repeating motifs and several portraits of surrogates. The south courtroom is finished in English oak, with French Renaissance style decorative elements. Overlooking each courtroom is a marble balcony, reached by staircases in the respective courtrooms. There are also ornately carved fireplaces, which contain marble mantelpieces lined with bronze surrounds made by Tiffany & Co. The seventh floor and the attic housed the city's records on steel shelves until 2017.
#### Basement
The vaults of the building's basement extend underneath both Chambers and Reade Streets, descending 40 feet (12 m) under Chambers Street and 30 feet (9.1 m) under Reade Street. The Surrogate's Courthouse had been designed with a small power plant in the basement, which provided power to the building and served neighboring municipally owned buildings.
The basement contains the municipal government's City Hall Library as well as the Municipal Archives. The library consists of two publicly accessible reading rooms, as well as several storerooms beneath the main basement for the Municipal Archives. The collection contains over 400,000 publications, including 66,000 books and 285,000 newspapers, journals, magazines, and periodical clippings. The material in the collection totals over 200,000 cubic feet (5,700 m<sup>3</sup>).
## History
In 1831, the original Hall of Records opened northeast of City Hall on the site of the "New Gaol", the old city jail, in present-day City Hall Park. The New-York Mirror described the original building as a Grecian-style structure with marble-columned porticoes on each side, as well as stucco walls, a copper roof, and masonry floors. In 1870, the original building was expanded by one story and a "fireproof" roof was erected. The first Hall of Records became dilapidated over time and, as early as 1872, lawyers had objected to the rundown condition of the building. Despite its fireproof appearance, the first Hall of Records used wood extensively in its floors and roof. The first Hall of Records was razed in 1903 and an entrance to the New York City Subway's Brooklyn Bridge–City Hall/Chambers Street station was built there.
### Planning and construction
#### Need and plans
By March 1896, a grand jury had reported the old Hall of Records was "unsafe and susceptible to destruction by fire". The New York City Department of Health reportedly "repeatedly condemned" conditions in the old building. In a November 1896 meeting of the New York City Board of Estimate, Ashbel P. Fitch, the New York City Comptroller, offered a resolution to create a committee to select a site for a new Hall of Records building. A coalition of lawyers, businesspeople, real estate developers, and property owners formed the next month to advocate for a new building. At the time, the city government preferred that new municipal buildings be erected in the area immediately outside City Hall Park, instead of inside the park, as the old Hall of Records had been.
The state legislature authorized the new Hall of Records building in early 1897, and the Board of Estimate recommended a site on the west side of Centre Street, between Reade and Chambers Streets. The site was approved in April 1897 despite the objection of Fitch, who believed that a site immediately to the north would be cheaper. The site approval included an extension of Elm (now Elk) Street southward from Reade to Chambers Street, forming the site's western boundary completed in 1901.
Thomas was indirectly chosen as the architect through the second of four architectural design competitions for the Manhattan Municipal Building, held between 1892 and 1894. From the 134 plans submitted, six finalist designs were chosen in 1894. In February 1896, the Municipal Building Commission of New York City awarded Thomas the first prize in the design competition, which included his employment as the architect of the municipal building. The municipal building for which Thomas had prepared plans had been canceled in 1894. Thomas was selected as the Hall of Records' architect upon the urging of then-mayor William Lafayette Strong. According to architecture critic Montgomery Schuyler, Strong had reminded the Board of Estimate that Thomas "deserved some consolation for a failure that had occurred by no fault of his own". Thomas presented his plans to the Board of Estimate in May 1897 which referred them to a committee composed of Schuyler, architect William Robert Ware and philanthropist Henry Gurdon Marquand. The Board of Estimate approved them and authorized bids for the building's construction in November 1897.
#### Start of construction
Thirteen companies submitted bids for granite in December 1897; John Peirce won the contract to supply white Hallowell granite. Difficulties in acquiring the plots for the building's site delayed the start of work. Some of the old buildings on the site were sold in early 1898. Other property owners resisted the seizure of their property through eminent domain. The resistance of one landowner (the Wendel family, which owned a myriad of Manhattan properties and had a policy to "never sell anything") required the state legislature to pass a special act to obtain the small portion of the site owned by the Wendels. Lessees also objected to the fact that they would not be compensated for the unexpired terms of their leases. Further complicating the construction process, there were several unsuccessful competing schemes for the site, including proposals for the municipal building and a new county courthouse, both in 1900. As late as 1904, there existed plans to convert the by then nearly complete building into one wing of a new county courthouse.
Work on the foundations began in early 1899, but was halted after about ninety days. The main reason was a lack of funding; several bond authorizations for the building had been delayed. Peirce filed a lawsuit in July 1898 to receive payment for the granite he had supplied, and the State Supreme Court issued a mandamus to authorize a bond issue to pay Pierce. The City Council passed a bill to that effect on August 3. The City Council adopted a resolution in a contentious vote the following week authorizing the issuance of \$2.1 million in bonds (about\$ million in ) for the building's construction; the City Council president Randolph Guggenheimer was called to cast the deciding vote.
Meanwhile, the Tammany Hall-affiliated Robert Anderson Van Wyck won the 1897 mayoral election, and soon after his inauguration, accused the Strong Administration of "extravagance" in its design. Ever since the election, Van Wyck had wanted to appoint Horgan and Slattery, who were friendly with the Tammany political machine, as the project's architects. In 1899, the mayor hired the firm to conduct a report on possible ways to reduce the cost of the interior furnishings. The original interior cost was to be \$2.5 million (about\$ million in ). Following Horgan and Slattery's recommendations, the interior appropriation was reduced by \$1 million (about\$ million in ), since the interior surfaces were to be made of cement rather than marble. The Board of Estimate received several bids for interior decoration in mid-1900, but it rejected all the bids, since the Comptroller's office had received "a number of complaints" that Thomas had shown favoritism to certain contractors. Guggenheimer laid the building's ceremonial cornerstone at a ceremony on April 13, 1901.
#### Change of architect and completion
Work had progressed slightly when Thomas died on August 28, 1901. Under pressure from Van Wyck, the Board of Estimate appointed Horgan and Slattery as the new architects two weeks later, prompting the Thomas estate to sue for damages. The New York Times criticized the change in plans as a "horganizing and slatterifying" of Thomas's original design. Comptroller Bird S. Coler protested against Horgan and Slattery's appointment, and Fitch refused to give Thomas's plans to Horgan and Slattery; the firm could not collect fees unless they had the plans. After Seth Low won the 1901 New York City mayoral election, he attempted unsuccessfully to cancel Horgan and Slattery's contract, but succeeded in limiting the number of changes made to Thomas's plan. By October 1902, a decision had been made to demolish the old Hall of Records, and at the end of the year, records were moved to a temporary site in the Morton Building on Nassau Street. Early in 1903, the Board of Estimate moved to approve Thomas's original plans for the interior of the new building.
Controversies arose following Martiny's and Bush-Brown's selection as sculptors for the Hall of Records building. Critics said the two sculptors could not commission the sculptures to the desired specifications in a short enough time period, while the city's Municipal Art Commission objected that Horgan and Slattery had never presented them with general plans for the sculptures and decorative marble. Mayor Low upheld the sculptural contracts in June 1903, which The New York Times estimated to be worth \$75,000. The statues were delivered in mid-1903, but not installed for several years, because the Municipal Art Commission refused to approve them until 1906.
Three city departments were scheduled to move into the new Hall of Records building in May 1904, when the leases on their existing premises expired, but the building was not yet complete despite assurances made the previous year by Jacob A. Cantor, the Manhattan borough president. In an attempt to speed up occupancy of the building, the installation of murals had been delayed. Further delays were announced in 1905, including the plan for Horgan and Slattery to remodel the not-yet-complete interior for \$500,000. The contractors made excuses for the delays after an inquiry from the Board of Estimate.
### Use
#### Early to mid-20th century
The first city-government employees moved into the building in December 1906. Shortly after the building's opening, news outlets reported that some of the building's "marble" was made of plaster, but this was consistent with the construction contract calling for "plaster enrichment". The substitution was not the result of corruption, but of the many changes in plans under the administrations of three mayors. Upon the building's completion, Horgan and Slattery claimed its final cost was \$5.063 million, while other estimates placed the cost as high as \$10 million. In any case, despite the Hall of Records building's expense and the \$90,000 annual maintenance cost, the New-York Tribune reported in 1907 that the building was already dirty and that some furnishings had been damaged to an extent described as "little short of criminal".
From the beginning, the Hall of Records contained space for New York City's departments of finance, taxes and assessments, and law, as well as the New York County Register, County Clerk, and Surrogate's Court. Other agencies and organizations occupied the building as well. The Vehicular Tunnel Commission was established in the Hall of Records in 1919, as was an employment bureau for soldiers.
The original elevators in the Hall of Records operated for several decades and, over the years, the number of elevators was cut from ten to six. Faults in the Hall of Records' elevator system had resulted in several deaths, while elevator operators were reluctant to operate them. The city government spent several hundred thousand dollars to repair the faulty elevators during the 1930s and 1940s, and new elevators were installed in the building in 1953. Another modification was made to the eastern facade in 1959, when the statues flanking the Centre Street entrance were removed because of street-widening work and the expansion of the underlying subway station.
#### Late 20th century to present
The Hall of Records was renamed the Surrogate's Courthouse in 1962. The New York City Council adopted a resolution to rename the structure that October because most of the building's space was used by the court and related offices. During the mid-1960s, the government of New York City proposed a new Civic Center municipal building, which entailed destroying several surrounding buildings. The architects of the planned building had proposed the courthouse's eventual demolition because the plans called for the new building and City Hall to be the only structures in an expanded City Hall Park. The redevelopment plans were ultimately scrapped during the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis.
During a renovation of the Municipal Building in the 1970s, the Municipal Reference Center was moved to the Surrogate's Courthouse. The Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) was founded in 1977, with its headquarters on the first floor of the Surrogate's Courthouse. DORIS combined the functions of the Municipal Reference Center with those of the Municipal Archives and Record Center, a separate agency. Until 2001, the New York City Department of Finance used part of the second floor for registering and storing mortgages and deeds. The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs moved into a 13,000-square-foot (1,200 m<sup>2</sup>) space on the second floor in 2006, following a \$4.1 million renovation designed by Swanke Hayden Connell Architects. The Building Energy Exchange was also established in the Surrogate's Courthouse in 2015, occupying a 5,500-square-foot (510 m<sup>2</sup>) space once used as a courtroom and as a film set for the television show Law & Order.
By the 21st century, the Surrogate's Courthouse no longer provided sufficient space for the city's records. In 2017, DORIS began moving the records to the New York State Archives, as well as to the Municipal Archives in the building's basement. In addition, between 2016 and 2020, Urbahn Architects renovated the lobby's skylight, which involved replacing several parts of the corroded steel frame as well as adding replicas of the original skylight's glass blocks. The skylight replacement project received the 2020 Lucy Moses Preservation Award from the New York Landmarks Conservancy.
## Reception and landmark designations
Critical reviews of the Surrogate's Courthouse have largely been positive. Upon the Hall of Records' completion, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle said: "The exterior of the big granite pile on Chambers and Centre streets may appeal to the artistic eye, but the interior is a positive revelation, and there is probably nothing like it in any city of the Union." Montgomery Schuyler, who had been on the committee that approved Thomas's plans, wrote in 1905 that "the Hall of Records comes nearer than any other public building in New York to recalling" what he described as a "Parisian" quality. Schuyler said that the design "has reproduced the effect of monuments designed under so much simpler conditions".
Architecture critic Paul Goldberger stated that the Surrogate's Courthouse's interior was one of the city's finest Beaux Arts interiors. He compared the building favorably to two contemporaries in lower Manhattan, the smaller Chamber of Commerce Building and the larger Custom House. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) described the Hall of Records building as "representative of a period when the Municipality of New York felt itself coming of age".
The LPC designated the exterior of the Surrogate's Courthouse as a New York City landmark in 1966, and the interior was similarly designated in 1976. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, and it was also designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977 for its architecture. The Surrogate's Courthouse building is also located within two historic districts. It is part of the African Burial Ground and the Commons Historic District, which was designated a city landmark district in 1993. The building is also part of the African Burial Ground Historic District, a National Historic Landmark District.
## See also
- List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan below 14th Street
- National Historic Landmarks in New York City
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Manhattan below 14th Street
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5,689,911 |
Banksia violacea
| 1,101,594,759 |
Species of plant
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[
"Banksia taxa by scientific name",
"Eudicots of Western Australia"
] |
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<td><p>Banksia violacea<br />
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Banksia violacea, commonly known as violet banksia, is a species of shrub or tree in the plant genus Banksia (family Proteaceae). It generally grows as a small shrub to 1.5 m (5 ft) high with fine narrow leaves, and is best known for its unusually coloured dark purple-violet inflorescences. The colour of the inflorescences, short leaves, and flattened follicles which are sticky when young, help identify this species from others in the field. It is found in low shrubland in southern regions of Western Australia from Esperance in the east to Narrogin in the west, growing exclusively in sandy soils.
First described in 1927 by the West Australian botanist Charles Gardner, the species was at one stage considered a variety of B. sphaerocarpa. Although there are no recognised subspecies or varieties, both lignotuberous and nonlignotuberous forms exist for Banksia violacea. Wasps, ants and flies have been recorded visiting flower spikes. Banksia violacea is classified as Not Threatened under the Wildlife Conservation Act of Western Australia. Regarded as of little value to floriculture, it is rarely cultivated.
## Description
Banksia violacea grows as a shrub up to 1.5 m (5 ft) tall, with narrow leaves 1–2 cm (0.4–0.8 in) long and about 0.15 cm (0.06 in) wide. New growth occurs in summer, and flowering ranges from November to April with a peak in February, but can be irregular in timing. Flowers arise from typical Banksia "flower spikes", and the inflorescences are made up of hundreds of pairs of flowers densely packed in a spiral around a woody axis. Roughly spherical with a diameter of 2–3 cm (0.8–1.2 in), the flower spikes arise from lateral stems lie partly within the foliage. Unusually for Banksia species, the inflorescences are often violet in colour, ranging anywhere from a dark violet-black through various combinations of violet and greenish-yellow in less pigmented blooms. Each flower consists of a tubular perianth made up of four fused tepals, and one long wiry style. The styles are hooked rather than straight, and are initially trapped inside the upper perianth parts, but break free at anthesis. The old flowers gradually fade to brown. The fruiting structure or follicle is a stout woody "cone", with a hairy appearance caused by the persistence of old withered flower parts. These follicles are crowded around the globular spike (called an infructescence at this point) and are oval to rhomboid, although the crowding makes some irregularly shaped. They measure 1–2.5 cm (0.4–1 in) long, 0.6 cm (0.2 in) high and 0.8–2.2 cm (0.3–0.9 in) wide. They are quite flattened and lack a ridge along the valve line. When young, the follicles are greenish in colour and slightly sticky, and covered in fine white hairs, fading to tan or grey with age. They open with fire, releasing a winged wedge-shaped (cuneate) seed 2–2.5 cm (0.8–1 in) long. The mottled dark grey seed body is falcate (crescent-shaped) and measures 1.2–1.8 cm (0.5–0.7 in) long and 0.2–0.25 cm (0.1 in) wide, with a flattened dark brown wing 1.1–1.7 cm (0.4–0.5 in) wide. The woody separator has the same dimensions as the seed.
The bright green cotyledon leaves of the seedlings are oblong to linear in shape and measure 1.5 cm (0.6 in) long by 0.3 cm (0.1 in) wide. The greenish red hypocotyl is hairy, as are the stems of young plants. The hairy seedling leaves are crowded and oppositely arranged. They measure 0.7–1.3 cm (0.2–0.5 in) in length and have recurved margins. Young plants often begin branching within their first year of life.
## Taxonomy
The type specimen of Banksia violacea was collected by the West Australian botanist Charles Gardner on 14 December 1926 in the vicinity of Lake Grace. The following year, he published a description of the species in Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Western Australia. He placed it in section Oncostylis of Bentham's taxonomic arrangement of Banksia, giving it the specific epithet violacea in reference to the violet flowers. Thus the full name of the species, with author citation, is Banksia violacea C.A.Gardner. The species has been considered a variety of B. sphaerocarpa (Fox Banksia); this view was published by William Blackall in his 1954 How to know Western Australian wildflowers. He considered B. violacea to be a variety of B. sphaerocarpa with violet flowers. This description was an invalid publication, however, and a nomen nudum. In 1981 Alex George declared Banksia sphaerocarpa var. violacea Blackall a nomenclatural synonym of B. violacea.
In George's 1981 arrangement, B. violacea was placed in subgenus Banksia because its inflorescence is a typical Banksia "flower spike"; section Oncostylis because of its hooked styles; and series Abietinae because its inflorescence is roughly spherical. It was placed in taxonomic sequence between B. incana (Hoary Banksia) and B. meisneri (Meissner's Banksia).
In 1996, Kevin Thiele and Pauline Ladiges published the results of a cladistic analysis of morphological characters of Banksia. They retained George's subgenera and many of his series, but discarded his sections. B. ser. Abietinae was found to be very nearly monophyletic and so it was retained. It further resolved into four subclades, so Thiele and Ladiges split it into four subseries. B. violacea appeared in the last of these:
This clade became the basis of B. subseries Longistyles, which Thiele defined as containing those taxa with very long and slender styles, smoothly convex perianth limbs without a costal ridge, and thickened margins. In accordance with their cladogram, their arrangement placed B. violacea first in taxonomic sequence, followed by B. laricina (Rose-fruited Banksia). However, Thiele and Ladiges' arrangement was not accepted by George, who, questioning the emphasis on cladistics, rejected most of their changes in his 1999 arrangement, restored B. series Abietinae to his broader 1981 definition, and abandoned all of Thiele and Ladiges' subseries. George commented that the species has no close relatives, being "loosely allied" to B. sphaerocarpa (Fox Banksia) and B. telmatiaea (Swamp Fox Banksia). Despite this, the sequence of the series was altered so that B. violacea fell between B. scabrella (Burma Road Banksia) and B. incana, and its placement in George's arrangement may be summarised as follows:
Banksia
: B. subg. Banksia
: : B. sect. Banksia (9 series, 50 species, 9 subspecies, 3 varieties)
: : B. sect. Coccinea (1 species)
: : B. sect. Oncostylis
: : : B. ser. Spicigerae (7 species, 2 subspecies, 4 varieties)
: : : B. ser. Tricuspidae (1 species)
: : : B. ser. Dryandroideae (1 species)
: : : B. ser. Abietinae
: : : : B. sphaerocarpa (3 varieties)
: : : : B. micrantha
: : : : B. grossa
: : : : B. telmatiaea
: : : : B. leptophylla (2 varieties)
: : : : B. lanata
: : : : B. scabrella
: : : : B. violacea
: : : : B. incana
: : : : B. laricina
: : : : B. pulchella
: : : : B. meisneri (2 subspecies)
: : : : B. nutans (2 varieties)
: B. subg. Isostylis (3 species)
Since 1998, an American botanist, Austin Mast, has been publishing results of ongoing cladistic analyses of DNA sequence data for the subtribe Banksiinae. His analyses suggest a phylogeny that is very greatly different from George's arrangement, and somewhat different from Thiele and Ladiges'. With respect to B. violacea, Mast's results agree with its placement near B. laricina and B. incana, placing it in a clade with these two species and B. sphaerocarpa var. dolichostyla (treated at species rank as B. dolichostyla). However, Thiele's B. subseries Longistyles appears to be polyphyletic, as do both definitions of B. ser. Abietinae—that is, none form a natural grouping.
Early in 2007, Mast and Thiele initiated a rearrangement of Banksia by merging Dryandra into it, and publishing B. subgenus Spathulatae for the taxa having spoon-shaped cotyledons. They foreshadowed publishing a full arrangement once DNA sampling of Dryandra was complete; in the meantime, if Mast and Thiele's nomenclatural changes are taken as an interim arrangement, then B. violacea is placed in B. subgenus Spathulatae.
## Distribution and habitat
B. violacea occurs in southern regions of Western Australia, from Woodanilling to Esperance and as far north as Hyden. This distribution includes areas of the Avon Wheatbelt, Esperance Plains and Mallee biogeographic regions. It favours white sandy soils, often overlying laterite, clay or quartzite. It usually grows among heath and shrublands, associated with mallee eucalypts and Banksia sphaerocarpa var. caesia. Banksia violacea is classified as Not Threatened under the 1950 Wildlife Conservation Act of Western Australia.
## Ecology
Like most other Proteaceae, Banksia violacea has proteoid roots, roots with dense clusters of short lateral rootlets that form a mat in the soil just below the leaf litter. These enhance solubilisation of nutrients, thus allowing their uptake in low-nutrient soils such as the phosphorus-deficient soils of Australia. B. violacea is highly susceptible to Phytophthora cinnamomi dieback.
Banksia violacea is one of a small number of Banksia species that has both lignotuberous and non-lignotuberous populations. In both cases, plants are adapted to release their aerial seed bank following a bushfire, ensuring seedlings are established on clear and relatively fertile ground; however the possession of a lignotuber makes plants much less reliant on fire regime for population maintenance and regeneration, as maternal plants are not killed by bushfire, but resprout from below ground level. Lignotuberous plants generally occur among the north-eastern populations, in the vicinity of Woodanilling. An investigation into the biogeography of these plants failed to find any vegetative, climatic or other environmental factors associated with the possession of a lignotuber.
Banksia flowerheads in general play host to a variety of birds, mammals and insects. However, only wasps, ants and flies were recorded visiting flower spikes during observations for The Banksia Atlas in the mid-1980s.
## Cultivation
Banksia violacea'' is rarely cultivated. It is a slow-growing plant that tends to become untidy with age, and generally does not flower until four to five years after sprouting from seed. Flowers are an unusual colour, but occur within the bush where they grow within and are usually obscured by foliage. It tolerates light pruning not below the green foliage, except for the variant with a lignotuber, which may be pruned heavily. George recommends a sunny position in light, sandy soil. Professor Margaret Bernard Sedgley of the Waite Institute suggests the species is of no value to floriculture, as the inflorescences are too small and obscured by the foliage, although she does add that the purple colour may be a worthwhile character to select for in plant breeding. Seeds do not require any treatment, and take 19 to 50 days to germinate.
## See also
|
27,303,361 |
Bombing of Yawata (June 1944)
| 1,170,502,603 |
Air raid on Japan during World War II
|
[
"1944 in Japan",
"Conflicts in 1944",
"Japan campaign",
"Japan in World War II",
"June 1944 events",
"World War II aerial operations and battles of the Pacific theatre",
"World War II strategic bombing of Japan"
] |
The Bombing of Yawata on the night of 15–16 June 1944 marked the beginning of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) strategic bombing campaign against the Japanese home islands during World War II and was the first such raid to employ strategic bombers. The raid was undertaken by 75 Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers staging from bases in China. Only 47 of these aircraft dropped bombs near the raid's primary target, the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata in northern Kyūshū, and little damage was caused. Five B-29s were lost in accidents during the operation and two were destroyed by Japanese aircraft.
While the raid did not achieve its aims, it raised Japanese civilians' awareness that their country was being defeated and received positive media coverage in the United States. Intelligence gathered by the B-29s also revealed weaknesses in Japan's air defenses and the raid was the first of many on Japan. Yawata was attacked again by B-29s operating from China on 20 August 1944 and much of the city was destroyed in a firebombing raid conducted by B-29s based in the Mariana Islands on 8 August 1945.
## Background
The first United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) raid on Japan took place on 18 April 1942 when 16 North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers flying from an aircraft carrier attacked several cities during the Doolittle Raid. Although this raid caused little damage, it boosted morale in the United States. The Japanese government responded to the attack by both increasing the number of fighter units based in the home islands and conducting an offensive in the Pacific Ocean which ended in defeat during the Battle of Midway. The USAAF could not mount further attacks on the Japanese home islands after this raid, however, as none of its combat aircraft had sufficient range to reach this area from bases in China or the Pacific until the B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber was ready for combat.
The B-29 Superfortress had a difficult introduction into service. Work began on designing the bomber in early 1940, and the first prototype flew on 21 September 1942. The Superfortress was the largest combat aircraft of World War II and boasted a heavy maximum bomb load, long range, and powerful defensive armament. The B-29 also incorporated a number of new features, such as a pressurized cabin and remote-controlled turrets. While 1,664 B-29s had been ordered by the USAAF before the aircraft first flew, its development was set back by several months when the second prototype crashed on 18 February 1943 and problems with the design were gradually solved. The 58th Bombardment Wing was formed in June 1943 to operate the USAAF's first B-29s, but it did not begin receiving these aircraft until October. The slow delivery of B-29s and mechanical problems with the aircraft meant that the wing lagged behind its training schedule and only became capable of deployment in March 1944, after the so-called "Battle of Kansas" program began to produce combat-ready aircraft.
In late 1943, the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a proposal to begin a strategic air campaign against the Japanese home islands and East Asia by basing B-29s in India and establishing forward airfields in areas of China. This strategy, which was designated Operation Matterhorn, required the construction of large airstrips near Chengdu in inland China which would be supplied by Allied cargo aircraft and be used to refuel B-29s traveling from bases in Bengal en route to bombing targets in Japan. XX Bomber Command was assigned responsibility for this effort, and its ground crew began to leave the United States for India by sea in December 1943. The Twentieth Air Force was formed in April 1944 to oversee all B-29 operations. In an unprecedented move, the commander of the USAAF, General Henry H. Arnold, took personal command of this unit and ran it from the Pentagon. The 58th Bombardment Wing was XX Bomber Command's main combat unit, and its movement from Kansas to India took place from April to mid-May. While the wing had not completed training at the time that it left for India, its combat groups were more experienced than most newly deployed USAAF bomber units.
## Preparations
### United States
After establishing itself in India, XX Bomber Command under the command of Brigadier General Kenneth B. Wolfe undertook various tasks to prepare for raids against Japan. Foremost among these was stockpiling fuel at the airfields in China. Until late 1944, USAAF Air Transport Command aircraft did not transport fuel for XX Bomber Command, and this task was instead undertaken by the B-29s. This arrangement proved inefficient, however, as 12 B-29 sorties between India and China were needed to transport enough fuel and other supplies to enable one of the heavy bombers to fly a round trip between China and Japan. As a result, it took longer than expected to build up sufficient stockpiles in China to allow B-29 operations to commence. Moreover, continued technical problems with the Superfortress, and particularly their Wright R-3350 engines, resulted in many of XX Bomber Command's aircraft being unserviceable and in need of modification at all times.
XX Bomber Command conducted its first combat operation on 5 June 1944. On this day, 98 B-29s were dispatched from bases in India to attack targets in Bangkok, Thailand, as a 'dress rehearsal' for more ambitious operations against Japan and targets in South East Asia. Although little damage was done and five B-29s were lost to flying accidents and technical faults, the operation was rated a success by XX Bomber Command, as it provided useful combat experience for the bomber crews, as well as data on how the B-29 performed in action.
On 6 June, Wolfe received a message from Arnold informing him that the Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted a raid to be conducted against Japan as soon as possible. The goals of this operation were to relieve pressure on Chinese forces which were being attacked by the Japanese and to support the invasion of Saipan. Arnold's message also asked how many B-29s could be dispatched on 15 and 20 June. At the time, the first raid on Japan was tentatively scheduled for 23 June, when sufficient supplies were expected to be available in China to support 100 B-29 sorties. Wolfe replied, stating that 50 B-29s could be used on 15 June and 55 if the operation was conducted on the 20th of the month. Arnold regarded these numbers as too low and directed that a raid by at least 70 B-29s be conducted against Japan on 15 June. Following this order, XX Bomber Command's B-29s and transport aircraft embarked on an intensive effort to move fuel to China. Further fuel supplies were made available to the heavy bombers by reducing the activities of USAAF fighter units based in China. During the same period, the command's ground crews reconditioned as many B-29s as possible to improve their reliability.
The target selected for the first raid on Japan was the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata, an industrial city about 1,600 miles (2,600 km) from Chengdu. This was the single most important facility in Japan's steel industry, as it produced 24 percent of the country's total output of rolled steel. The facility was dependent on three coke plants, and the largest of these was selected as the designated aiming point for the B-29s. Nearby Laoyao harbor, which was an important industrial port, was designated as the raid's secondary target. The selection of Yawata's steelworks as the first target to be attacked was in accordance with a decision made by the Twentieth Air Force on 1 April 1944, which assigned the highest priority to attacking Japan's steel and coke industry. It was decided to conduct the raid at night, with each B-29 bombing individually, as the aircraft lacked the range needed to conduct a more fuel-intensive formation flight between the forward air bases and Yawata.
### Japanese
Despite an elaborate deception plan, which included planted news stories claiming that B-29s would be deployed as bombers in Europe but only be used as armed transports in the China Burma India Theater, the Japanese military detected the preparation of B-29 bases in India and China. Moreover, Japanese agents in China reported on all B-29 movements, giving hours of warning time before raids on the home islands. Japanese intelligence services deduced that once logistical preparations were complete, the heavy bombers would attack factories in northern Kyūshū, and that the first raid would be made at night. On 26 April, Japanese fighters encountered a B-29 for the first time, when two Nakajima Ki-43 "Oscars" attacked and damaged a lone B-29 flying near the China–India border.
The Japanese military began transferring fighter aircraft from China and the Pacific to the home islands in early 1944 in anticipation of B-29 raids. In June 1944, Yawata lay within the Western District of Japan's four regional defense commands. The 19th Air Brigade was formed in June 1944 to command fighter units in the Western District and comprised the 4th and 59th Air Regiments. The 4th Air Regiment was stationed at Ozuki Airfield and was equipped with 35 Kawasaki Ki-45 Toryu twin-engined heavy fighters, of which 25 were operational in mid-June, and had the brigade's best-trained pilots. The inexperienced 59th Air Regiment was based at Ashiya Fukuoka Airfield and operated 25 Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien single-engined fighters, though only about seven or eight were operational. In addition, Yawata and northern Kyūshū were defended by anti-aircraft artillery units and barrage balloons. Radar stations and a network of lookout posts provided early warning of raids.
The 19th Air Brigade's primary mission was to defend the industrial facilities in northern Kyūshū, and particularly the ironworks at Yawata. The brigade's plans for the defense of the Western District called for its interceptor aircraft to be concentrated over Yawata and not move far from the area. While this inflexible deployment was considered unsatisfactory by the 19th Air Brigade, it was deemed necessary, as few aircraft were available, the only searchlight units needed to facilitate night operations were stationed near Yawata and northern Kyūshū was regarded by the Army as being the most important region in the Western District. Prior to the raid on Yawata, the 19th Air Brigade undertook joint planning with anti-aircraft units and implemented a training program which included practice in responding to alerts and night flying.
## Raid
The 58th Bombardment Wing's B-29s began moving from India to the forward bases in China on 13 June. By 15 June, 83 Superfortresses had reached the four forward airfields around Chengdu, though at least 12 turned back before reaching China, and another crashed, causing the death of its entire crew. Each of the aircraft had departed India carrying the 2 short tons (1,800 kg) of 500-pound bombs they would use in the raid. A large number of staff officers, including eight generals, also traveled to Chengdu to observe the operation but were not allowed to participate in the raid. The bomber crews were joined by eight journalists and three news photographers, however. At the time, the USAAF had few recent photos of Japanese industrial areas, and the bomber crews were briefed on Yawata using maps and photos from the late 1920s and early 1930s.
The Superfortresses began to depart their bases at 16:16 local time on 15 June. The raiding force was led by the 58th Bombardment Wing's commander, Brigadier General LaVerne G. Saunders. One aircraft crashed immediately after taking off with no casualties and a further four turned back suffering mechanical problems. The remaining 70 aircraft proceeded on a direct course to Okino Island, where they turned for the run-in to Yawata. Each of the 58th Bombardment Wing's four groups sent two aircraft ahead to mark the target and the other aircraft flew in a long bomber stream; both of these tactics had been adopted from those used by the British Royal Air Force's Bomber Command in Europe. The raiders were detected by Japanese Army and Army Air Force units in China. These reports were passed onto the 19th Air Brigade, which estimated that the bombers were bound for northern Kyūshū and would arrive there at about midnight local time. A radar station and lookout posts on Cheju-Do subsequently detected the bombers from 23:31 to 00:30 local time. An air raid alarm was issued at 00:24 and 24 aircraft of the began to take off three minutes later to patrol over northern Kyūshū. The 59th Air Regiment was not scrambled, as its pilots had not worked with those of the 4th Air Regiment in night operations, its aircraft were suffering from mechanical problems, and it was feared that the B-29s would sight and attack the base at Ashiya.
B-29s began to arrive over Yawata at 00:38 local time, and the attack on the city lasted almost two hours. Only 15 of the American aircraft were able to aim their bombs visually, as the city was blacked out and obscured by smoke or haze; the other 32 bombed by radar. Two further B-29s bombed Laoyao harbor and another five struck targets of opportunity; overall 107 tons of bombs were dropped during the raid. After the first bombs were released, regular updates on the operation were transmitted to the Twentieth Air Force's headquarters in Washington, from where they were relayed to Arnold, who was in London at the time. The raiders were met with heavy but inaccurate anti-aircraft fire, and the searchlights stationed around Yawata were not effective. The 4th Air Regiment achieved the only kill of the night when one of its fighters shot down a B-29. The Regiment's other aircraft struggled to make contact with the bombers and achieved few interceptions.
The B-29s' return flight to China was largely uneventful. One of the Superfortresses was strafed and destroyed by Japanese aircraft after landing at Neihsiang with engine trouble, and a further two aircraft crashed with the loss of their entire crews and a correspondent from the magazine Newsweek. Overall, American losses in the raid were seven B-29s destroyed and a further six damaged by anti-aircraft guns; 57 airmen and one journalist were killed aboard these aircraft. Many of the B-29s were stranded in China for several days after the raid by fuel shortages there and only returned to India after Wolfe borrowed 15,000 US gallons (57,000 L) of fuel from the 312th Fighter Wing's supplies. During this period, the bombers were highly vulnerable to Japanese retaliatory raids, but none came about.
## Aftermath
Little damage was caused by the raid on Yawata. On 18 June, a USAAF Fourteenth Air Force aircraft overflew the city and photographed the target area. These photos showed that only a single bomb had landed within the Imperial Iron and Steel Works complex, and it had hit a powerhouse 3,700 feet (1,100 m) from the nearest coke oven. Light damage had also been inflicted on Kokura Arsenal and other industrial and civilian buildings in the area. Despite a USAAF policy of encouraging factual reporting of B-29 operations, the raid's results were overstated in the U.S. media. The light combat losses suffered by the raiders and electronic intelligence collected by the B-29s revealed the ineffectiveness of Japanese radar and air defenses. As a result, the USAAF dispatched a single photo-reconnaissance B-29 to overfly much of Japan and Korea on 21 June. This sortie was successful and greatly improved U.S. intelligence holdings on these areas.
The Yawata raid revealed serious shortcomings in Japan's air defenses. While the 19th Air Brigade initially claimed to have shot down eight B-29s and damaged a further four, it was soon determined that only two of the bombers had been destroyed. This loss ratio was considered too low to defeat attacks on the home islands. The raid demonstrated that Japan had too few airbases and not enough aircraft were available for night operations. It was also found that the Toryu fighter was not well suited to intercepting B-29s, as it was slower than the bombers, too lightly armed, and most aircraft lacked radar. While the air raid alert system had proved successful in this instance, the radars which detected the American aircraft had been unable to determine their altitude, and it was decided that there was a need to further expand radar coverage. The performance of the 131st Anti Aircraft Regiment during the raid was judged to be so poor that its commander was transferred to Manchuria. News reports of the Yawata raid and successful U.S. landing at Saipan on the same day also indicated to Japanese civilians that the war was not going well. In response to the raid, Japanese Government ministers urged families living in the country's four major cities to evacuate their children to rural areas.
The 15–16 June 1944 raid on Yawata marked the beginning of the USAAF's strategic bombing campaign against Japan. The city was struck again by B-29s during daylight and night raids on 20 August, but no serious damage was caused. XX Bomber Command conducted 49 raids from its bases in China and India between June 1944 and March 1945, of which nine were made on targets in the Japanese home islands, but Operation Matterhorn did not achieve its goals. Despite initial problems, XXI Bomber Command's operations from the Mariana Islands, which began on 28 October 1944, proved much more effective. As a result, XX Bomber Command was transferred to the Mariana Islands in early 1945. Yawata was targeted again by B-29s on 8 August 1945, two days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. On this day the city was attacked by 221 B-29s, escorted by three groups of P-47N Thunderbolt fighters, including the 318th Fighter Group based on Ie Shima off the coast of Okinawa. The bombers were armed with incendiary bombs, and the resulting firestorm destroyed 21 percent of Yawata's urban area.
## See also
- Air raids on Japan
|
206,812 |
Lumen Field
| 1,173,870,962 |
Multi-purpose stadium in Seattle, Washington, U.S.
|
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"2002 establishments in Washington (state)",
"2026 FIFA World Cup Stadiums",
"American football venues in Washington (state)",
"CONCACAF Gold Cup stadiums",
"College football venues",
"Lumen Technologies",
"Major League Soccer stadiums",
"Music venues in Washington (state)",
"National Football League venues",
"National Women's Soccer League stadiums",
"Seattle Dragons",
"Seattle Sea Dragons",
"Seattle Seahawks stadiums",
"SoDo, Seattle",
"Soccer venues in Washington (state)",
"Sports venues completed in 2002",
"Sports venues in Seattle",
"Washington Huskies football venues"
] |
Lumen Field is a multi-purpose stadium in Seattle, Washington, United States. Located in the city's SoDo neighborhood, it is the home field for the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League (NFL), the Seattle Sea Dragons of the XFL, the Seattle Sounders FC of Major League Soccer (MLS), and OL Reign of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). Originally called Seahawks Stadium, it was renamed Qwest Field in June 2004 when telecommunications carrier Qwest acquired the naming rights. The stadium became known as CenturyLink Field following Qwest's June 2011 acquisition by CenturyLink and was nicknamed "The Clink" as a result; it received its current name in November 2020 with CenturyLink's rebrand to Lumen Technologies. It is a modern facility with views of the Downtown Seattle skyline and a seating capacity of 68,740 spectators for NFL games and 37,722 for most MLS matches. The complex also includes the Event Center which is home to the Washington Music Theater (WaMu Theater), a parking garage, and a public plaza. The venue hosts concerts, trade shows, and consumer shows along with sporting events. Located within a mile (1.6 km) of Downtown Seattle, the stadium is accessible by multiple freeways and forms of mass transit.
The stadium was built between 2000 and 2002 on the site of the Kingdome after voters approved funding for the construction in a statewide election held in June 1997. This vote created the Washington State Public Stadium Authority to oversee public ownership of the venue. The owner of the Seahawks, Paul Allen, formed First & Goal Inc. to develop and operate the new facilities. Allen was closely involved in the design process and emphasized the importance of an open-air venue with an intimate atmosphere.
Seahawks fans at Lumen Field have twice claimed the Guinness World Record for loudest crowd roar at an outdoor stadium, first at 136.6 decibels in 2013, followed by a measurement of 137.6 decibels in 2014. The crowd's notorious noise has also contributed to the team's home field advantage with an increase in false start (movement by an offensive player prior to the play) and delay of game (failure of the offense to snap the ball prior to the play clock expiring) penalties against visiting teams. The stadium was the first in the NFL to install a FieldTurf artificial surface. Numerous college and high school football games have also been played at the stadium, including the 2011 Apple Cup and all Washington Huskies home games during the renovation of Husky Stadium in 2012. The XFL's Seattle Dragons began playing at Lumen Field in 2020 and returned in 2023 as the Sea Dragons.
Lumen Field is also designed for soccer. The first sporting event held included a United Soccer Leagues (USL) Seattle Sounders match. The USL team began using the stadium regularly for home games in 2003. The MLS expansion team, Seattle Sounders FC, began its inaugural season in 2009 at the stadium. Lumen Field was the site of the MLS Cup in 2009 and 2019; the latter set a new attendance record for the stadium with 69,274 spectators. The venue also hosted the 2010 and 2011 tournament finals for the U.S. Open Cup as well as the second leg of the 2022 tournament final for the CONCACAF Champions League; the Sounders won all three finals, with new tournament attendance records set for each final (or leg) hosted at Lumen Field. The stadium hosted several CONCACAF Gold Cup matches across multiple editions, and the Copa América Centenario in 2016. It will also host matches during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which was awarded to the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
## Funding
The Seahawks played their home games at the Kingdome from their 1976 inaugural season until 1999, sharing the stadium with Major League Baseball's Seattle Mariners and the National Basketball Association's Seattle SuperSonics. In 1995 a proposal was made to issue county bonds to fund a remodeling project of the facility. The proposal failed, and as a result, Seahawks' owner Ken Behring threatened to sell or move the team (likely to Los Angeles). In 1997 local billionaire Paul Allen pledged to acquire the team if a new stadium could be built and said that the team could not be profitable until they left the Kingdome. He asked the state legislature to hold a special statewide referendum on a proposal to finance a new stadium. Allen also agreed to cover any cost overruns. With Allen agreeing to pay the \$4 million cost, the legislature agreed. The vote was scheduled to be held in June 1997 but in May a Seattle resident filed a lawsuit that claimed the legislature did not have authority to call for such a vote, since it would be paid for by a private party who could gain from the result. The case was delayed until after the vote. The proposal was pitched to voters as providing both a new home for the Seahawks and a venue for top-level soccer. It passed on June 17, 1997, with 820,364 (51.1%) in favor and 783,584 against. The vote was close in Seattle, but it received 60% approval in Seattle's northern and eastern suburbs. The public funding was unpopular farther away in the eastern portion of the state. In October, a Thurston County Superior Court judge ruled that the legislature acted properly and in the public's interest, and he dismissed the pending lawsuit. The Washington Supreme Court upheld the decision that December.
Voter approval of the referendum created a public–private partnership. The Washington State Public Stadium Authority was created to oversee public ownership of the stadium, exhibition center, and parking garage complex. Allen purchased the Seahawks and formed First & Goal Inc. to build and operate the facility. The budget for the project was \$430 million. Of this cost, \$44 million was allotted to build the Event Center, \$26 million for the parking garage, and \$360 million for the stadium. First & Goal was to cover cost overruns and pay up to \$130 million of the project while the contribution from the public was capped at \$300 million. The public funding package included new sports-related state lottery games, taxes on the facility's admissions and parking, sales tax credits and deferrals, and an eight-year extension of the 2% tax on hotel rooms in King County. The taxes on admissions and parking were set below the authorized 10% to preserve the tax-exempt status of the project's bonds, but the percentage was increased to the full amount when the bonds were completely paid in 2021. Since then, they have served as dedicated funding sources for maintenance and modernization of the facilities.
In September 1998, First & Goal signed a 30-year stadium lease that includes options to extend for another 20. Per the agreement, the Public Stadium Authority receives \$850,000 a year from First and Goal (adjusted for inflation), and First & Goal keeps all revenue from the stadium and parking garage. The company receives 80% of the revenue from the exhibition center while the other 20 percent is allotted to a state education fund. First & Goal is responsible for all operating and maintenance costs, expected to be \$6 million a year, and must keep the facility in "first-class" condition. Other details of the lease include the availability of affordable seats, a coordinated effort with neighboring T-Mobile Park (the Mariners' current ballpark) to prevent gridlock, a provision for naming rights, the investment in public art at the stadium, and the giveaway of a luxury suite to a fan each Seahawks' game.
## Construction and layout
The architectural firm Ellerbe Becket, in association with Loschky, Marquardt and Nesholm (LMN) Architects of Seattle, designed the 1.5 million square feet (140,000 m<sup>2</sup>) project. Allen was closely involved during the design process. While growing up he attended games at the University of Washington's (UW) outdoor Husky Stadium. His goal was to create a similar experience and atmosphere at the new venue. The exhibition center portion of the project was designed over a period of 14 months by LMN Architects while First & Goal managed the construction. Town meetings were held to discuss the impact on the public, and the company created a \$6 million mitigation fund for nearby neighborhoods. In accordance with a program established by the building team, contracts totaling \$81 million were awarded to minority- and women-owned businesses. Union apprentices made up 19% of the workforce through another program with local trade unions.
Construction of the new exhibition center and parking garage was set to commence on September 19, 1998, but prolonged lease discussions between First & Goal and the Public Stadium Authority delayed the official groundbreaking to September 28. The exhibition center opened on October 30, 1999, and subsequently hosted its first event on November 4. On March 26, 2000, to make way for the stadium, the Kingdome was demolished in the world's largest implosion of a single concrete structure. Almost all of the Kingdome rubble was recycled with roughly half used for the new stadium. The designers were challenged by the soft soil at the site since it was a tidal marsh until public works projects in the early 20th century adjusted the waterline of nearby Elliott Bay. The top layer is a soft fill taken from the grading projects that had leveled portions of Seattle's hills. To account for the soft soil, the complex sits on over 2,200 pilings driven 50 to 70 ft (15 to 21 m) below the ground to form what is essentially a pier for the foundation. Eight individually connected sections were built to account for the soil concerns, temperature effects, and the potential for earthquakes. The adjoining exhibition center and parking garage are separate structures and are not part of the eight-section stadium.
The site of Lumen Field is the smallest of those developed for new NFL stadiums, at 30 acres (12 ha). The upper levels were cantilevered over the lower sections to fit within the limited space. Along with the angle of seats and the placement of the lower sections closer to the field, this provided a better view of the field than typically seen throughout the country and allowed for a 67,000-seat capacity. Space is available to increase the total capacity to 72,000 for special events. Included in the capacity are 111 suites and over 7,000 club seats. The stadium has 1,400 seats for those with disabilities and their companions located in various sections. In 2009, Qwest Field ranked 21st out of the 31 stadiums in the NFL for total seating capacity.
The configuration of Lumen Field is a U-shape with an open north end to provide views of downtown Seattle and the large north plaza. The large retractable roof of T-Mobile Park along with Mount Rainier to the southeast can be seen from the partially open south end. The stadium's concourses were built to be wide, and they provide additional views of the surrounding area. A 13-story tower was erected at the north end of the stadium that visually complements the Seattle skyline. The tower features a vertically oriented scoreboard which is the first of its kind in the NFL. At the base is bleacher seating for 3,000 called the "Hawks' Nest". Another addition not previously seen in the NFL are field-level luxury suites located directly behind the north end zone.
Allen rejected plans for a retractable roof during the early stages of the stadium's design. The lack of a retractable roof made it open to the elements, provided better views, and reduced the total cost of the project. The roof, at 200,000 sq ft (19,000 m<sup>2</sup>), covers 70% of the seats but leaves the field open. The roof spans 720 ft (220 m) between concrete pylon supports at the north and south ends of the stadium. Its two expansive sections are held from below by trusses. From above, two arches with additional supports rise 200 ft (61 m) over the field. Post-tensioned cables were used to achieve its final shape and positioning. To minimize damage in the event of an earthquake, the roof has a friction pendulum damper system. This disconnects the roof from the support pylons so that it can move independently of the structure. The technology had never been applied to a large-scale roof before Lumen Field. A 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck the Seattle area during construction. The structure responded as expected by the designers, and there was minimal damage. The project was completed on budget and a month ahead of schedule.
The roof was originally painted white to aesthetically distinguish it from both T-Mobile Park and the nearby industrial area; however, the paint gradually turned ash gray despite cleanings and repaintings, prompting a blue-colored repaint of the roof from May to July 2010. Light-emitting diodes following the outline of the stadium's logo were subsequently installed on the roof in October 2019. The east side of the stadium has a large glass curtain wall that faces the nearby International District. The exterior of the stadium also consists of salmon-colored concrete, and the west side of the structure is partially clad with red brick. The coloring and facade were designed so the stadium would blend with the older buildings in neighboring Pioneer Square. To reduce costs, the exterior was not completed with brick or ornate steel work.
In 2015, the stadium was expanded with the addition of the Toyota Fan Deck on 5,775 square feet (536.5 m<sup>2</sup>) of space at its southern end; privately funded by the Seahawks, it consisted of a new 12 Flag raising platform flanked by two 500-seat sections, pushing the capacity of the stadium to 68,000. The 1,000 additional seats were made available to then-current season ticket holders, with remaining seats allocated to the Blue Pride waiting list for season tickets. The stadium also has additional seats that can be deployed for special events, bringing the maximum capacity to 72,000.
Lumen Field underwent minor renovations in 2022 as the stadium marked its twentieth anniversary. Improvements to the stadium made before the start of the 2022 Seahawks season include the conversion of an unused 6,300-square-foot (590 m<sup>2</sup>) space below the Hawks' Nest into a food and beverage area, the addition of an open cashierless concession area on the concourse behind the Toyota Fan Deck, and the replacement of a pair of video display boards at the north end of the stadium with Diamond Vision boards from Mitsubishi Electric that are more than double the size of the pre-existing ones. Additional renovations planned for 2023 and 2024 include the creation of two standing room open-air decks and a hospitality area adjacent to the home team's locker room for spectators to view players walking between it and the field.
## Surface
The 1997 state referendum stated that the stadium would feature a natural grass surface, but FieldTurf was not an option when the stadium was originally presented to voters according to the Public Stadium Authority. Seahawks management reconsidered the playing surface after the Seahawks played on FieldTurf at Husky Stadium during the 2000 and 2001 seasons. Artificial turf was installed because it was easier to maintain than natural grass. The potential damage to a natural grass field caused by Seattle's frequent rain also made the surface an appealing option. In order to keep a grass surface robust under heavy football use during late fall and early winter rains, a \$1.8 million irrigation and heating system would have been required. The coach of the Seahawks at the time, Mike Holmgren, said that FieldTurf installation was the right decision and stated that "the players love it, and I think this surface will offer a better product on the field for the fans." Local soccer fans were concerned that the lack of a natural grass field would hinder Seattle's chances of receiving an MLS expansion franchise. They asserted that voters had approved the facility with the understanding that the new stadium was intended for soccer as well as football. In a compromise, First & Goal agreed to pay for grass to be installed for special events when needed.
In 2002, Seahawks Stadium became the first stadium in the NFL to install a FieldTurf artificial field. The surface is made of plastic fibers rooted in a mixture of ground rubber and sand. The field was replaced in early 2008 after tests showed that compression of sand and rubber increased the risk of player injuries. For the second installation, FieldTurf won the bid over Polytan. For the replacement surface, a one-inch (two and one-half centimeters) poured rubber foundation was added to prevent the compression from reoccurring. Under the naming rights agreement, Qwest paid \$500,000 for the installation and First & Goal paid the remaining amount, which was undisclosed. By 2010 the FieldTurf's quality had decreased with the blades becoming matted down. It also failed FIFA's quality testing to be ranked 2 Star. A new FieldTurf surface was laid down in 2012 and it met the requirements of a 2 Star field after testing. A new turf field, using the FieldTurf Revolution 360, was installed in February 2016 ahead of the 2016 Sounders season.
There have been various opinions regarding both the artificial surface and temporary grass surfaces used for soccer matches. After the Brazilian national team defeated Canada's side 3–2 in 2008, Brazil's coach commented that one reason for his team's unexpectedly poor performance was the loosely installed grass field. The Grenada national team struggled to cope with the artificial surface during their loss at the 2009 CONCACAF Gold Cup. In July 2009, the U.S. Soccer Federation chose D.C. United's RFK Stadium over Qwest Field for the U.S. Open Cup. The general manager of D.C. United speculated that RFK's grass field was one of the reasons his team had a stronger bid. The general manager of the Sounders, Adrian Hanauer, told The Seattle Times in 2010 that replacement of the surface was a continuing conversation between the Sounders and Allen's Vulcan Inc. When the Los Angeles Galaxy traveled to Seattle in May 2012, the FieldTurf was noted as one of the reasons David Beckham and Robbie Keane were left out of the line-up. In 2014, the field was criticized during an ESPN broadcast after an Amazon corporate event involving a game of Quidditch damaged the pitch before a Sounders match. Zach Scott expressed concerns over the same installation of the field and its effects on his body. The 10-year lease extension between Sounders FC and First & Goal announced in 2015 mandates new turf every four years or sooner; the first such new installation was in 2016.
Between August and November, both the Seahawks and Sounders FC host games at Lumen Field. Each team has emphasized the importance of playing their games without the other team's painted lines on the field. Around 2003, at the Seahawks' request, local company EcoChemical developed for the field a new kind of paint that is "designed to fail". The new paint is relatively easy to remove with a power washer and a special chemical solution, a process that the company describes as environmentally friendly. With the new paint, converting the field between American football and soccer takes 14 hours in dry weather, though painting logos and other colors takes additional time. Despite various preparations, some Sounders matches—particularly in the playoffs—have had Seahawks logos and American football lines painted on the turf.
## Football
### Seahawks
Prior to the stadium opening in 2002, Allen and Bob Whitsitt said that they hoped the new stadium would help turn the Seahawks into a Super Bowl contender and that Seattle would be considered to host the championship game. The seating is expandable to 72,000 for the purpose of holding the game, but the NFL typically does not consider cities with outdoor stadiums where the average temperature in February is below 50 °F (10 °C). The number of season tickets available at Qwest was capped at 61,000 following the Super Bowl appearance. The ensuing waiting list was the first for the Seahawks since the early 1990s.
The team's first season at their new home was in 2002. Their first game at the new facility was a 28–10 preseason loss to the Indianapolis Colts on August 11, 2002. They went on to end their first season at the new field with a 7–9 record. In the 2003 season, the team went undefeated at home and reached the playoffs. It was the first time the franchise had won 10 games in a single season in 17 years. The Seahawks again reached the postseason during the 2004 season and played their first playoff game at Qwest Field on January 8, 2005. In that game, they lost to the St. Louis Rams who had already defeated them twice that season. The following season, the Seahawks went undefeated at home for the second time in three years and won their first-ever NFC Championship, but lost in Super Bowl XL. Between 2002 and 2005, the Seahawks won 24 of their 32 regular season games at the stadium.
In 2006, the Seahawks had a 9–7 record and hosted the Dallas Cowboys in the wild card round of the playoffs. The Seahawks trailed 20–13 with less than 7 minutes remaining but came back to win 21–20. In 2007, the team won seven of their eight home games and clinched their fourth consecutive division title. Qwest Field was again the site for their wild card game, and they defeated the Washington Redskins 35–14. In 2008, the Seahawks went 4–12 and had only two home wins. Holmgren left the organization after the season. When he was interviewed about memorable moments and the fans, he said that Qwest Field was "a remarkable place to compete in and to play professional football". He called a game at the stadium "an experience".
In 2010, the Seahawks were the first NFL team with a losing record ever to win a division title in a season not shortened by a strike. Seattle earned its fifth consecutive home playoff victory with a 41–36 win over the New Orleans Saints. "God bless the voters," defensive tackle Craig Terrill said after the game in reference to the stadium's importance to the franchise.
Under Pete Carroll, the Seahawks were undefeated at home during the 2012 season. Season tickets for 2013 sold-out with a franchise-record 98% renewal rate. Through the 2018 season, the Seahawks compiled a regular season record of 95–41 at the stadium.
Lumen Field often sells out for Seahawks games; although the team struggled to sell out games (with two resulting blackouts) in its inaugural season at the stadium, it has sold out every game after the 2003 home opener, with 146 consecutive games sold out through the 2019 season. Despite dismal on-field performances in 2008 and 2009, the team maintained its base of season ticket holders; Before the 2008 season, the 14,000 single game tickets not already allotted sold out less than 15 minutes after they became available. After going 9–23 over two seasons in 2008 and 2009, the number of available season tickets was increased to 62,000. The largest crowd to attend a Seahawks game at Lumen Field was 69,190, against the Philadelphia Eagles on November 20, 2016.
#### Home field advantage
Lumen Field has earned a reputation as one of the loudest stadiums in the NFL. It was, at one point in time, in the Guinness World Record books for being the loudest stadium in the world. The seating decks and partial roof, both trap and amplify exceptional amounts of noise and reflect it back onto the field. This noise possibly contributes to increased false start penalties since opposing offenses can miss audibles and the snap count, as well as delay of game penalties due to the reduced efficiency of communicating plays to the offense. From 2002 through 2012, there have been 143 false-start penalties on visiting teams in Seattle, second only to the Minnesota Vikings. During that same time period, the Seahawks have accumulated a home win record of 59–29, with a simultaneous road record of 33–55.
When Tod Leiweke was hired as the Seahawks' new CEO in 2003, he had a large flagpole installed in the south end to fly the 12th Man Flag as a tribute to the team's fans, collectively known as the 12th man. The team had retired the number 12 in 1984 to honor its fans, who had gained notoriety for intensifying the Kingdome's noisy acoustics such that the NFL enacted a rule in 1989 penalizing home teams for disruptive crowd noise when visiting teams are on offense; the rule itself is rarely enforced due to the futility of controlling such noise leaguewide. A local celebrity, sometimes a former Seahawk, raises the flag during the network television pre-game events.
In 2005, the stadium gained national attention when the visiting New York Giants committed 11 false start penalties. Seahawks head coach Mike Holmgren attributed the penalties to the enthusiasm and noise from the crowd. He dedicated the ball used to make the game-winning field goal to the fans, and it is now displayed at the stadium. The Giants' general manager, Ernie Accorsi, asked an NFL senior vice president whether the Seahawks had broadcast artificial crowd noise over the public address system during this game. The NFL sent a memorandum early in the 2006 season about such complaints and sent officials to monitor two games. Holmgren denied the allegations, and the crowd responded by being even louder than usual when the Giants returned to Qwest Field. Since 2005 the Seahawks have tracked the number of false starts committed by visiting teams and display the statistic on a scoreboard to motivate the crowd. As of 2013, the stadium has had a league-high number of false starts since. In preparation for the 2005 NFC Championship Game at Qwest Field, the Carolina Panthers practiced with the recorded sounds of jet engines in the background to prepare for the volume of the crowd.
Kickers experience further disadvantages when attempting field goals at Lumen Field. Both the stadium's proximity to Puget Sound and the open north end create winds that are challenging to gauge. Former Seahawks kicker Josh Brown adjusted to the winds, and he believed the moisture in the air caused trouble for others.
On September 15, 2013, Seattle Seahawks fans successfully broke the Guinness World Records for the loudest stadium in the world. The 131.9-decibel record occurred during the sack of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in the first quarter. Fans then broke their new record during the third quarter of the same game when a level of 136.6 decibels was achieved during a goal line stand by the Seahawks defense. The record was broken by the crowd at Arrowhead Stadium on October 13, 2013, with a sound pressure level of 137.57 decibels. The record was later regained by the Seahawks fans on December 2, 2013 with 137.6 decibels against the New Orleans Saints, but lost once again to Arrowhead Stadium in a Monday Night Football game between the Kansas City Chiefs and New England Patriots on September 29, 2014, setting the record that still stands at 142.2 decibels.
### XFL
The Seattle Dragons (now the Sea Dragons) of the XFL played their only two home games at CenturyLink Field during the short-lived league's 2020 season. The team was among seven in the XFL to share its stadium with NFL teams and drew a league-record 29,172 fans at the home opener on February 15, 2020. The second game had 22,060 in attendance, with the team among the highest-drawing in the XFL before the league suspended operations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The renamed Sea Dragons resumed play in 2023 at Lumen Field, holding its first home game on February 23.
### College
Lumen Field has hosted several college football games. The hometown Washington Huskies played their 2005 season opener against the Air Force Falcons at the stadium in Tyrone Willingham's first game as head coach. The Huskies played their entire 2012 home schedule at the stadium while their home field, Husky Stadium, underwent a \$250 million renovation; to expedite the start of the renovation by three weeks, the Huskies and the Washington State Cougars also played the Apple Cup in 2011 at then-CenturyLink Field.
From 2002 through 2014, the stadium hosted a Washington State Cougars' non-conference home game each season (except for 2010). This included the 86th "Battle of the Palouse" against the Idaho Vandals in 2003. The attendance for the dozen Cougar games ranged from 30,927 to 63,588. CenturyLink Field is approximately 300 miles (480 km) from WSU, but closer to many alumni in the Seattle metro area. The university's athletic director said that an attendance of 50,000 was needed to make it worth moving the game from Martin Stadium in Pullman. The Cougars went 6–6 in their annual Seattle home game, which generated additional revenue that was invested in facilities for the football program while also increasing exposure to the western side of the state.
In April 2009, it was proposed that the annual Apple Cup between the Seattle-based Huskies and the Pullman-based Cougars be hosted at CenturyLink Field for six years beginning in 2010. The two programs could not reach an agreement on how to divide tickets. Pullman's business community had expressed concerns that playing the game away from the Palouse would be detrimental to the local economy.
Qwest Field hosted the second and final Seattle Bowl in late 2002, in which Wake Forest beat Oregon 38–17. The inaugural Seattle Bowl was played a year earlier at Safeco Field, but the game was discontinued when organizers could not secure financing before 2003. Later attempts to revive the Seattle Bowl were unsuccessful. The Seattle Sports Commission led a push in 2008 for a new bowl game starting in 2010 that would have been a fundraiser for Seattle Children's Hospital.
Lower division NCAA teams have played at the stadium throughout the years. From 2003 to 2008, the Division II football teams from Western Washington University and Central Washington University met each year in a rivalry game called "The Battle in Seattle." Central won all but the 2004 game, and each meeting attracted more than 11,000. Western (of Bellingham) discontinued its football program after the 2008 season, but Central (of Ellensburg) agreed to continue the series with Western Oregon University (of Monmouth) for games in 2009 and 2010. "Battle in Seattle VII" saw Central make a comeback to win 23–21 in front of 5,374.
On October 31, 2009, the Division I FCS Eastern Washington University Eagles played a home game in Seattle for the first time. Along with the goal of drawing alumni from the metropolitan area, the athletic directors from both Eastern Washington (of Cheney) and Washington State had expressed the importance of connecting with alumni at receptions and other events on the western side of the state. Billed as the "Showdown on the Sound", the game was a 47–10 victory over the Portland State Vikings. According to Eastern's athletic director, Qwest Field's rental was \$50,000 for the day. The stadium subsequently hosted a game on September 11, 2010, between Eastern and Central; coined the "Battle of the Sound", the game saw Eastern prevail over Central 35–32.
### High school
Lumen Field has been used for high school football. The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) puts on the annual Emerald City Kickoff Classic at the stadium. The event is a season-opening series of games between some of the best teams in the state. The WIAA approached the Seahawks regarding use of the stadium for their high school football state championship games after moving them out of the Tacoma Dome in 2019, but the latter declined and recommended using Husky Stadium instead, noting that they were unable to match the offer terms from UW's athletic department.
The stadium features a meeting between one of the best teams in Washington and one of the best from another state in the "Best of the West" game. On September 4, 2004, Washington's Bellevue High School and California's De La Salle High School played in front of over 25,000, a state high school event attendance record. Bellevue ended De La Salle's national-record 151-game winning streak in a 39–20 win. On September 16, 2009, Bellevue defeated another highly regarded California school at Qwest Field in a 30–16 victory over Long Beach Polytechnic. USA Today had recently rated both teams highly with Long Beach third and Bellevue at 16th in the nation.
After the organizer of the event announced a match-up between Washington's Skyline High School and Oregon's Jesuit High School in 2009, he said that he proposed the possibility of televising games to Fox Sports, but Fox did not televise the game. Skyline went on to shut out Jesuit 17–0 during that year's Emerald City Classic.
Within Lumen Field, a large art piece called The State of Football pays tribute to high school football in the state of Washington. The piece features a depiction of Washington and holds replica football helmets from every high school football team in the state. The installation is part of the Stadium Art Program commissioned through First & Goal's lease of the facility, costing nearly \$1.75 million.
## Soccer
Lumen Field is also designed for soccer. The stadium meets FIFA sight line requirements and provides separate locker rooms for soccer teams. Camera locations were chosen for optimal television coverage of the sport. Numerous exhibition games have taken place at Lumen Field, including high-profile clubs such as Manchester United, Barcelona, Celtic, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Club América and Chivas de Guadalajara. These games have proved to be highly popular, and the first sell-out of 66,772 fans at the stadium was a soccer match between Manchester United and Celtic. National teams such as Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, and China have played exhibition games at the stadium. The artificial turf has been temporarily overlaid with grass for international matches.
Seattle was the site of the 2005 CONCACAF Gold Cup Group B opening round between the national teams of the United States, Costa Rica, Canada, and Cuba. Two matches of the 2009 CONCACAF Gold Cup opening round were also played at the stadium on July 4, 2009. In the second match, the United States comfortably defeated Grenada, who were playing in their first major international competition, 4–0. The Gold Cup returned in 2013 with Panama beating Martinique and Mexico defeating Canada in opening group play matches. CenturyLink Field also hosted three matches during the 2016 Copa América Centenario, a special inter-continental tournament, including two group stage fixtures and a quarterfinal match between the United States and Ecuador attended by 47,322 spectators.
On November 22, 2009, Seattle was the site of the 14th annual MLS Cup between Real Salt Lake and the Los Angeles Galaxy, where Salt Lake won the Cup on penalty kicks (5–4) in front of 46,011. The stadium was the eighth venue to host the event and had the fourth-largest attendance for an MLS Cup. The MLS Cup returned to Seattle in 2019, with the Sounders hosting Toronto FC as the higher seed. The Sounders won in front of 69,274 spectators, setting a new record for a sporting event at Lumen Field and recording the second-highest cup attendance in league history.
### 2026 FIFA World Cup
Lumen Field was among the 58 facilities in the United States being considered for FIFA World Cup matches had the country's bid for the tournament in 2018 or 2022 been successful. When discussing Seattle as a candidate, Sunil Gulati of the U.S. Soccer Federation called it "a world-class facility". Seattle finally hosted a World Cup qualifier on June 11, 2013; the qualifier, which was the city's second overall and the first since 1976, saw the United States top Panama 2–0 in front of a raucous crowd of 40,847. The United States will co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup with Canada and Mexico; Lumen Field was one of the 23 finalist venues named by the organizing committee in 2018 after the bid was awarded by FIFA.
Lumen Field was subsequently announced as one of the 11 American venues, as well as one of five current MLS venues selected to host matches in June 2022; together with BC Place in Vancouver, both will be the only host venues based in the Pacific Northwest out of 16 total. Under preliminary plans by the city government, it would cost up to \$10.5 million to host the World Cup matches, including installation of a temporary grass surface, policing the venue and practice fields, and managing a fan festival at the Seattle Center or on the city's waterfront. During the event, the stadium will be temporarily renamed to "Seattle Stadium" in accordance with FIFA's policy on corporate sponsored names.
### Sounders (USL)
The first sporting event at the stadium was a double-header on July 28, 2002, that included both the Sounders Select Women and the men's Seattle Sounders of the USL team. The women defeated the Vancouver Breakers 4–3, while the men beat the Vancouver Whitecaps 4–1 in front of 25,515 people. The USL team began using the facility regularly as their home field in 2003. Although team management was concerned with the high rent and the underused seating capacity, they were drawn by the sponsorship opportunities and location. The Sounders increased their average attendance from 2,583 at Seattle's Memorial Stadium in 2002 to 3,452 at the new stadium in 2003. In 2005, the Sounders beat the Richmond Kickers 2–1 in a penalty shootout for the USL championship in front of 8,011. Scott Jenkins scored the final goal and announced his retirement after the game.
In 2008, the MLS expansion franchise Sounders FC decided to develop the Starfire Sports Complex in nearby Tukwila, and the USL team played most of the season at that facility. At the time, team management thought that practicing and playing at Starfire could provide a better transition for those hoping to play for the new MLS team. The last match for the USL Sounders at Qwest Field was the 2008 season opener against the rival Portland Timbers. The game ended in a scoreless draw in front of 10,184.
### Sounders FC
The potential to draw an MLS expansion team helped drive public support for building the stadium in 1997. In 1996, Seattle was considered for one of the 10 original MLS teams; however, the region lacked an adequate outdoor stadium. In 2007, it was announced that Seattle would be the home of an expansion team. The first Sounders FC regular season match was at the stadium on March 19, 2009. Fredy Montero scored the first goal in a 3–0 Seattle victory.
Before the opening of their first season, the Sounders already had the highest number of season ticket holders in the MLS after they sold all 22,000 of the offered season ticket packages. The team created a web site that was used to identify seating arrangements for season ticket holders based on personal interests including preferred method for watching a game and foreign team preference. For the first half of the inaugural season, the upper and lower sections were tarped off, limiting the seating capacity to 27,700. The club hoped to create an intimate environment as well as a supply-and-demand factor that would reward season ticket holders and encourage early purchase of seats. The stadium has continuously sold out league matches in the limited seating configuration. However, majority owner Joe Roth has said that he "won't be happy" until the entire venue is open.
The stadium was designed to easily open seating sections in stages if needed. After repeated sellout crowds, additional sections were opened, increasing total capacity to 32,400. In the Sounders' first year they set an MLS record with an average home attendance of 30,943 people. Official capacity was increased to 35,700 after the 2009 season. In 2011, The Sounders continued to hold the highest average attendance in the league with 38,496. Official capacity was increased again to 38,500 with the opening of the Hawk's Nest for the 2012 season. The team averaged 44,247 spectators in the 2015 MLS season, its all-time record. As of 2019, the regular season MLS capacity at Lumen Field is listed as 37,722 seats, with four matches scheduled to use larger sections of the stadium.
The Sounders set the state's single game soccer attendance record when they hosted Manchester United in front of 67,052 in July 2011. On October 15, 2011, additional seats were available for a record crowd of 64,140 during the final regular season home match, a Sounders 2–1 win followed by ceremonies honoring retiring goalkeeper Kasey Keller. And on October 7, 2012, another attendance record was broken when 66,452 fans were present for a 3–0 win over the Portland Timbers, following a ceremony awarding retired Forward Roger Levesque a Golden Scarf. The Sounders set an attendance record for sporting events at the stadium of 69,274 when Seattle hosted the 2019 MLS Cup Final against Toronto FC, winning 3-1 for their 2nd MLS Cup trophy.
CenturyLink Field has hosted two U.S. Open Cup tournament finals. On October 5, 2010, the tournament's 81-year-old attendance record was broken when Sounders FC defeated the Columbus Crew 2–1 in front of 31,311. That record was broken one year later when CenturyLink Field again hosted the final on October 4, 2011 as 36,615 spectators watched Seattle defeat the Chicago Fire 2–0. The stadium has also hosted a CONCACAF Champions League tournament final; on May 4, 2022, the Sounders defeated Pumas UNAM 3–0 in the second leg of the final before a tournament-record crowd of 68,741 to win 5–2 on aggregate, becoming the first MLS team to win the tournament under its current format.
Like the Seahawks, the Sounders have received attention for sellout crowds and boisterous fans. The Seattle Times reported that a "new standard for attendance and game-day atmosphere has been set" due to the loud sellout crowds. The passionate Emerald City Supporters have dubbed the general admission sections behind the south goal the "Brougham End" for the street that runs along the south edge of the complex.
### OL Reign
OL Reign played against Portland Thorns FC at the stadium on August 29, 2021, as part of a doubleheader with the Sounders and Timbers. The Reign defeated the Thorns 2–1 in front of 27,248, breaking the NWSL's attendance record. The Reign later announced on December 15 that they would move into the stadium for the 2022 season, leaving their previous home, Cheney Stadium in Tacoma, as plans to build a soccer-specific stadium in the city stalled amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The stadium's capacity is reduced to 10,000 seats for most OL Reign home matches.
## Other events
The stadium became a yearly site for Supercross races in 2005. Seattle had been left out of the circuit since the Kingdome hosted the race in 1999. It takes more than 650 truckloads of dirt to build the course for the event that around 50,000 spectators attend. The stadium has also been used for public speaking engagements. For example, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso, delivered a 28-minute speech to 50,817 people on April 12, 2008.
The largest concert attendance in the stadium's history was set on July 22, 2023, by Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour; 72,171 spectators watched at Lumen Field on the first of two days. The record was surpassed a month later by Ed Sheeran's The Mathematics Tour, which drew 77,286 to Lumen Field on August 26.
Lumen Field hosted several events related to the 2023 MLB All-Star Game, which was played at the adjacent T-Mobile Park. The first two rounds of the Major League Baseball draft took place at Lumen Field on July 9. The playing surface was divided into several pitching areas while the north lot and event center include performance stages, batting cages, and museum exhibits.
### Event Center
The Lumen Field Event Center connects to the stadium's west field plaza and consists of two exhibition halls, a conference room, and a concourse. The center hosts pre-game events for the Seahawks and Mariners. According to the Public Stadium Authority's website, the event center contributes more than half a billion dollars to the region's economy. Originally debuting as the Washington State Stadium Exhibition Center, the center became known as the Seahawks Exhibition Center upon the stadium's opening in 2002. The center was renamed the Qwest Field Event Center in 2004 after Qwest acquired naming rights to the complex; it retained the "Event Center" name in subsequent renamings of the complex.
The Event Center had previously been called "the worst venue in town" for concerts, but in 2006, AEG Live and First & Goal formed a partnership to create a new theater within the Event Center space. Washington Mutual (WaMu) obtained the naming rights to the new theater in a 10-year deal, calling it the WaMu Theater. The theater space can be assembled on an as-needed basis within the building and equipment, including the 104-foot (32 m) wide stage, can be dismantled and stored in the stadium. The theater's acoustics were improved by installing panels on the ceiling and a large curtain. Depending on the seating configuration, the capacity can be 3,300, 4,000, or 7,000. Seal performed the inaugural concert on November 6, 2006. Though the naming rights deal was terminated following the bankruptcy of Washington Mutual in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the theater retained the WaMu name, with AEG intending to seek a new sponsor for it; the meaning of the WaMu abbreviation was subsequently altered to represent "Washington Music" instead.
During the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Event Center was contracted for use as a field hospital. The temporary hospital was erected in April 2020 with 250 beds under the management of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Army Corps of Engineers. On April 8, the state government announced that the field hospital would be dismantled and relocated to another state by the federal government, as the pandemic's spread in Washington had slowed. In March 2021, the Event Center was converted into a mass vaccination center with capacity for 4,000 to 5,000 doses per week administered by the city government in partnership with First & Goal and Swedish Health Services. The Event Center was also used as a vote center during the 2020 and 2022 elections by King County.
## Seismic experiments
During a Seahawks football game on January 8, 2011, the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) recorded what was dubbed a "Beast Quake", for Marshawn "Beast Mode" Lynch, a player whose performance on one running play excited the Qwest Field stadium crowd enough for the resultant shaking to be recorded on PNSN instruments. In 2014 and 2015 additional sensors were added in and around the stadium. Motivations for the experiment included conducting a quick-reaction exercise for the seismometer network team to install sensors and interpret results, and to test the ability to handle increased web traffic from interested visitors from the general public. Shaking was detected at the stadium after a 90-yard touchdown run during a January 10, 2015 playoff game, dubbed a "Kam Quake" for the player making the run, Kam Chancellor. The PNSN scientists stated that the biggest event of all was the "Dance Quake", which was caused by all the jumping and dancing that followed Marshawn Lynch's touchdown and 2-point conversion during 2014–15 NFC Championship Game on January 18, 2015.
PNSN has also recorded seismic activity from Sounders fans; multiple earthquakes were recorded on November 10, 2019, during the MLS Cup final between the Sounders and Toronto FC. Further "RaveQuakes" were recorded on May 4, 2022, during the second leg of the CONCACAF Champions League Final between the Sounders and Pumas UNAM. During two Taylor Swift concerts for The Eras Tour in July 2023, PSNS recorded a maximum ground acceleration of 0.011 meters per second (2.2 ft/min) with peaks similar to a magnitude 2.3 earthquake. The readings were attributed to fan noise and dancing as well as the sound system used for the concerts.
## Facility contracts and naming rights
The stadium was originally named Seahawks Stadium. The name was changed to Qwest Field in June 2004 after telecommunications carrier Qwest bought the naming rights for \$75 million for a period of 15 years. According to the agreement, the proceeds must be used for maintenance and upgrades. A portion of any profit then goes into a \$10 million fund Allen guaranteed for youth playfields. As a result of CenturyLink's acquisition of Qwest, the stadium was officially renamed CenturyLink Field on June 23, 2011. CenturyLink renewed its naming rights contract in 2017, paying \$162.7 million for the stadium from 2019 to 2033. Although CenturyLink changed its corporate name to Lumen Technologies in September 2020, the stadium was to retain the CenturyLink Field name due to a clause in the contract that permits a one-time name change only if a corporate takeover occurs. Despite that clause, the name was changed to Lumen Field on November 19 following approval from the Washington State Public Stadium Authority.
After the stadium was renamed for CenturyLink in 2011, fans and media outlets speculated on potential nicknames for the venue. An informal reader poll conducted by The Seattle Times showed that "The Clink" was a popular suggestion; it was subsequently used among fans and locals. From 2009 to 2018, the field was entitled "The Xbox Pitch at CenturyLink Field" during Sounders FC matches as part of a sponsorship deal with Microsoft. However, when Zulily took over the Sounders FC sponsorship before the start of the 2019 season, the field was left unnamed; the deal did not include naming rights to the field. A new sponsorship with the Puyallup Tribe of Indians was announced in September 2022, renaming the field to "Emerald Queen Casino Pitch at Lumen Field".
In addition to its 48 concession stands, restaurants and lounges are located throughout the stadium. Along with typical fare, local Pacific salmon sandwiches, Dungeness crab cakes, and microbrews are served, as well as food from Chinatown–International District restaurants. Aramark was the initial food and beverage service provider for the stadium and exhibition center, having signed a five-year contract in 2001. Levy Restaurants followed with a five-year deal to provide the service for the complex in 2006, while Delaware North Sportservice took over service operations in 2013; under both contracts, First & Goal paid a management fee to the vendor while covering operational costs. The Seahawks subsequently created First & Goal Hospitality to provide the food and beverage service in-house in 2017, doing so until Levy regained the rights via a partnership in 2020; the service continued to operate under the former brand as part of the agreement.
The pouring rights of non-alcoholic beverages at the stadium were initially held by The Coca-Cola Company, which had a longstanding partnership with the Seahawks prior to 1998, when the team partnered with PepsiCo. In May 2007, Seattle-based Jones Soda outbid Coca-Cola to sign a five-year contract for the rights, making it the only venue in the NFL that did not have a contract with either Coca-Cola or PepsiCo. Jones Soda, known for unusual and holiday-themed soda flavors such as Blue Bubblegum and Turkey & Gravy, said it was working to develop football-related soda flavors, such as "grass-stain". Amid increasing financial turmoil for Jones Soda, the company renegotiated its contract with the Seahawks in September 2009, relinquishing the rights to provide energy drinks and water along with a luxury suite. Both parties ultimately announced their mutual decision to end the Jones sponsorship in June 2010, following which Coca-Cola reclaimed the vending rights with a five-year agreement. The Seahawks and Coca-Cola announced a multi-year partnership extension in 2018.
## Transportation
Lumen Field is bordered by the Pioneer Square, International District, and Industrial District neighborhoods of Seattle. The stadium's referendum approval required a transportation management program to coordinate transportation options. First & Goal's facility lease agreement also included a provision to ease gridlock. A "Dual Event Agreement" with T-Mobile Park was established so that two events with a combined attendance of over 58,000 would not occur within four hours of each other. The agreement was also implemented to coordinate mass transit to the stadiums on game days. Local and regional buses service the area with stops within three blocks of the stadium, and the county's Metro Transit bus service formerly offered express routes from several area park and ride lots for games. Trains service the stadium through Seattle's King Street Station and overflow tracks accommodate extra trains during events. Regional commuter trains operate on Sundays if the Seahawks have a home game. Trains also run for mid-day Sounders FC games on Saturdays. In 2008, the commuter trains carried 64,000 event goers to the two nearby stadiums. Amtrak, primarily through the Pacific Northwest corridor's Cascades route, also serves the station. On July 18, 2009, Link light rail service between SeaTac and downtown began in time for an exhibition match between the Sounders and Chelsea. The light rail system's 1 Line connects to the baseball and football stadiums via the Stadium station. The International District/Chinatown station also offers convenient access to the north entrance.
Lumen Field is located near the junction of Interstate 5 and Interstate 90 to the east. It is bordered by State Route 99 and the south portal of the State Route 99 tunnel to its west, while the State Route 519 corridor connects I-90 to the neighborhood. Local governments compromised with both the Seahawks and Mariners on the location of new ramps over the train tracks that run along the east sides of Lumen Field and T-Mobile Park. An overpass for South Royal Brougham Way, the road that borders the south edge of the Lumen Field complex, to improve access and safety was completed in May 2010. The stadium has 2,000 parking spaces in its parking garage and 8,400 in the surrounding lots to accommodate automobile traffic. Beginning in December 2011, construction of the Stadium Place mixed-use development project replaced much of the north lot. The developer must replace the 500 lost parking spots and turn over parking revenue to the Public Stadium Authority per an agreement with King County.
|
179,293 |
Rumours (album)
| 1,173,282,966 | null |
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"1977 albums",
"Albums produced by Christine McVie",
"Albums produced by John McVie",
"Albums produced by Ken Caillat",
"Albums produced by Lindsey Buckingham",
"Albums produced by Mick Fleetwood",
"Albums produced by Richard Dashut",
"Albums recorded at Record Plant (Los Angeles)",
"Albums recorded at Wally Heider Studios",
"Fleetwood Mac albums",
"Grammy Award for Album of the Year",
"Juno Award for International Album of the Year albums",
"United States National Recording Registry albums",
"United States National Recording Registry recordings",
"Warner Records albums"
] |
Rumours is the eleventh studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 4 February 1977 by Warner Bros. Records. Largely recorded in California in 1976, it was produced by the band with Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. The recording sessions took place in the aftermath of several relationship breakups among the band members in addition to heavy drug use, both of which shaped the album's direction and lyrics.
Recorded with the intention of making "a pop album" that would expand on the commercial success of their self-titled 1975 album, the music of Rumours is characterized by a mix of electric and acoustic instrumentation, accented rhythms, guitars, and keyboards, while its lyrics concern personal and often troubled relationships. Its release was postponed by delays in the mixing process. Following the album's release, Fleetwood Mac undertook worldwide concert tours. Rumours became the band's first number-one album on the UK Albums Chart and also topped the US Billboard 200. The songs "Go Your Own Way", "Dreams", "Don't Stop", and "You Make Loving Fun" were released as singles, all of which reached the US top 10, with "Dreams" reaching number one.
Rumours was an instant commercial success, selling over 10 million copies worldwide within just a month of its release. It garnered widespread acclaim from critics, with praise centred on its production quality and vocal harmonies, which frequently relied on the interplay among the band’s three vocalists, and which has subsequently inspired the work of musical acts in various genres. It won Album of the Year at the 1978 Grammy Awards and received Diamond certifications in several countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia, and the US, where it was certified 21× Platinum. As of February 2023, Rumours has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, making it the sixth best-selling album of the 1970s, and the 9th best-selling album of all time.
Often considered Fleetwood Mac's magnum opus, Rumours has frequently been cited as one of the greatest albums of all time. In 2003, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, Rumours was remastered and reissued with the addition of "Silver Springs", which had been excluded from the original release, and a bonus CD of outtakes from the recording sessions. In 2017, it was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress. In 2020, Rumours was rated the seventh-greatest album of all time in Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
## Background
In July 1975, Fleetwood Mac's eponymous tenth album was released to great commercial success, reaching No. 1 in the U.S. in 1976. The record's singles "Over My Head", "Rhiannon" and "Say You Love Me" gave the band extensive radio exposure. At the time, Fleetwood Mac's line-up consisted of guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham, drummer Mick Fleetwood, keyboard player and vocalist Christine McVie, bass guitarist John McVie, and vocalist Stevie Nicks. After six months of non-stop touring, the McVies divorced, ending eight years of marriage. The couple stopped talking to each other socially and discussed only musical matters. Buckingham and Nicks—who had joined the band before 1975's Fleetwood Mac after guitarist Bob Welch had left—were having an on/off relationship that led them to fight often. The duo's arguments stopped only when they worked on songs together. Fleetwood faced domestic problems of his own after discovering that his wife Jenny, mother of his two children, was having an affair with his best friend.
Press intrusions into the band members' lives led to inaccurate stories. Christine McVie was reported to have been in the hospital with a serious illness, while Buckingham and Nicks were declared the parents of Fleetwood's daughter Lucy after being photographed with her. The press also wrote about a rumoured return of original Fleetwood Mac members Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, and Jeremy Spencer for a 10th anniversary tour. Despite false reports, the band did not change its lineup, although its members had no time to come to terms with the separations before recording for a new album began. Fleetwood has noted the "tremendous emotional sacrifices" made by everyone just to attend studio work. In early 1976, Fleetwood Mac crafted some new tracks in Florida. Founding members Fleetwood and John McVie chose to dispense with the services of their previous producer, Keith Olsen, because he favoured a lower emphasis on the rhythm section. The duo formed a company called Seedy Management to represent the band's interests.
## Recording
In February 1976, Fleetwood Mac convened at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, with hired engineers Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. Production duties were shared by the three parties, while the more technically adept Caillat was responsible for most of the engineering; he took a leave of absence from Wally Heider Studios in Los Angeles on the premise that Fleetwood Mac would eventually use their facilities. The set-up in Sausalito included a number of small recording rooms in a large, windowless, wooden building. Most band members complained about the studio and wanted to record at their homes, but Fleetwood did not allow any moves. Christine McVie and Nicks decided to live in two condominiums near the city's harbour, while the male contingent stayed at the studio's lodge in the adjacent hills. Recording occurred in a six-by-nine-metre (20 by 30 ft) room which included a 3M 24-track tape machine, a range of high-quality microphones, and an API mixing console with 550A equalisers; the latter were used to control frequency differences or a track's timbre. Although Caillat was impressed with the set-up, he felt that the room lacked ambience because of its "very dead speakers" and large amounts of soundproofing.
The record's working title in Sausalito was Yesterday's Gone. Buckingham took charge of the studio sessions to make "a pop album". According to Dashut, while Fleetwood and the McVies came from an improvisational blues-rock background, the guitarist understood "the craft of record making". During the formative stages of compositions, Buckingham and Christine McVie played guitar and piano together to create the album's basic structures. The latter was the only classically trained musician in Fleetwood Mac, but both shared a similar sense of musicality. When the band jammed, Fleetwood often played his drum kit outside the studio's partition screen to better gauge Caillat's and Dashut's reactions to the music's groove. Baffles were placed around the drums and around John McVie, who played his bass guitar facing Fleetwood. Buckingham performed close to the rhythm section, while Christine McVie's keyboards were kept away from the drum kit. Caillat and Dashut spent about nine days working with a range of microphones and amplifiers to get a larger sound, before discovering they could adjust the sound effectively on the API mixing console.
As the studio sessions progressed, the band members' new intimate relationships that formed after various separations started to have a negative effect on Fleetwood Mac. The musicians did not meet or socialise after their daily work at the Record Plant. At the time, the hippie movement still affected Sausalito's culture and drugs were readily available. Open-ended budgets enabled the band and the engineers to become self-indulgent; sleepless nights and the extensive use of cocaine marked much of the album's production. Chris Stone, one of the Record Plant's owners, indicated in 1997 that Fleetwood Mac brought "excess at its most excessive" by taking over the studio for long and extremely expensive sessions; he stated, "The band would come in at 7 at night, have a big feast, party till 1 or 2 in the morning, and then when they were so whacked-out they couldn't do anything, they'd start recording".
Nicks has suggested that Fleetwood Mac created the best music when in the worst shape, while, according to Buckingham, the tensions between band members formed the recording process and led to "the whole being more than the sum of the parts". The couple's work became "bittersweet" after their final split, although Buckingham still had a skill for taking Nicks' tracks and "making them beautiful". The vocal harmonies between the duo and Christine McVie worked well and were captured using the best microphones available. Nicks' lyrical focus allowed the instrumentals in the songs that she wrote to be looser and more abstract. According to Dashut, all the recordings captured "emotion and feeling without a middle man ... or tempering". John McVie tended to clash with Buckingham about the make-up of songs, but both admit to achieving good outcomes. Christine McVie's "Songbird", which Caillat felt needed a concert hall's ambience, was recorded during an all-night session at Zellerbach Auditorium in Berkeley, across San Francisco Bay from Sausalito.
Following over two months in Sausalito, Fleetwood arranged a ten-day tour to give the band a break and get fan feedback. After the concerts, recording resumed at venues in Los Angeles, including Wally Heider Studios. Christine McVie and Nicks did not attend most of the sessions and took time off until they were needed to record any remaining vocals. The rest of Fleetwood Mac, with Caillat and Dashut, struggled to finalise the overdubbing and mixing of Rumours after the Sausalito tapes were damaged by repeated use during recording; the kick and snare drum audio tracks sounded "lifeless". A sell-out autumn tour of the US was cancelled to allow the completion of the album, whose scheduled release date of September 1976 was pushed back. A specialist was hired to rectify the Sausalito tapes using a vari-speed oscillator. Through a pair of headphones which played the damaged tapes in his left ear and the safety master recordings in his right, he converged their respective speeds aided by the timings provided by the snare and hi-hat audio tracks. Fleetwood Mac and their co-producers wanted a "no-filler" final product, in which every track seemed a potential single. After the final mastering stage and hearing the songs back-to-back, the band members sensed they had recorded something "pretty powerful".
## Promotion and release
In autumn 1976, while still recording, Fleetwood Mac showcased tracks from Rumours at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. John McVie suggested the album title to the band because he felt the members were writing "journals and diaries" about each other through music. Warner Bros. confirmed the release details to the press in December and chose "Go Your Own Way" as a December 1976 promotional single. The label's aggressive marketing of 1975's Fleetwood Mac, in which links with dozens of FM and AM radio stations were formed across America, aided the promotion of Rumours. At the time, the album's advance order of 800,000 copies was the largest in Warner Bros.' history.
Rumours was released on 4 February 1977 in the US, and a week later in the UK. The front cover features a stylised shot of Fleetwood and Nicks dressed in her "Rhiannon" stage persona, while the back has a montage of band portraits; all the photographs were taken by Herbert Worthington. On 28 February 1977, after rehearsing at SIR Studios in Los Angeles, Fleetwood Mac started a seven-month-long promotional tour of America. Nicks has noted that, after performing mostly Rumours songs during gigs, the band initially encountered poor receptions from fans who were not accustomed to the new material. A one-off March performance at a benefit concert for United States Senator Birch Bayh in Indiana was followed by a short European tour of the UK, the Netherlands, France, and Germany in April. Nigel Williamson of Uncut called Fleetwood Mac's performances "rock's greatest soap opera". "Dreams", released in March 1977, became the band's only number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 that June.
For their 2009 concert tour, the band proffered an expanded release of the album with "Silver Springs" included with the original album and an extra disk of "Roughs & Outtakes, Early Demos and Jam Sessions". For the album's 35th anniversary in 2013, a deluxe edition of the album was released. In addition to "Silver Springs" and 2004's extra disk, this release added a disk of "More From The Recording Sessions", a 12-track disk of live songs from the "Rumours World Tour" and a DVD of The Rosebud Film, a 1977 documentary about the album.
## Composition
### Lyrics
Fleetwood Mac's main writers — Buckingham, Christine McVie and Nicks — worked individually on songs but sometimes shared lyrics with each other. "The Chain" is the only track on which all members, including Fleetwood and John McVie, collaborated. All songs on Rumours concern personal, often troubled relationships. According to Christine McVie, the fact that the lyricists were focusing on the various separations became apparent to the band only in hindsight. "You Make Loving Fun" is about her boyfriend, Fleetwood Mac's lighting director, whom she dated after splitting from John. Nicks' "Dreams" details a breakup and has a hopeful message, while Buckingham's similar effort in "Go Your Own Way" is more pessimistic. After a short fling with a New England woman, he was inspired to write "Never Going Back Again", a song about the illusion of thinking that sadness will never occur again once content with life. The lines "Been down one time/Been down two times" refer to the lyricist's efforts when persuading the woman to give him a chance.
"Don't Stop", written by Christine McVie, is a song about optimism. She noted that Buckingham helped her craft the verses because their personal sensibilities overlapped. McVie's next track, "Songbird", features more introspective lyrics about "nobody and everybody" in the form of "a little prayer". "Oh Daddy", the last McVie song on the album, was written about Fleetwood and his wife Jenny Boyd, who had just got back together. The band's nickname for Fleetwood was "the Big Daddy". McVie commented that the writing is slightly sarcastic and focuses on the drummer's direction for Fleetwood Mac, which always turned out to be right. Nicks provided the final lines "And I can't walk away from you, baby/If I tried". Her own song "Gold Dust Woman" is inspired by Los Angeles and the hardship encountered in such a city. After struggling with the rock lifestyle, Nicks became addicted to cocaine; the lyrics address her belief in "keeping going".
### Music
Featuring a soft rock and pop rock sound, Rumours is built around a mix of acoustic and electric instrumentation. Buckingham's guitar work and Christine McVie's use of Fender Rhodes piano or Hammond B-3 organ are present on all but two tracks. The record often includes stressed drum sounds and distinctive percussion such as congas and maracas. It opens with "Second Hand News", originally an acoustic demo titled "Strummer". After hearing Bee Gees' "Jive Talkin'", Buckingham and co-producer Dashut built up the song with four audio tracks of electric guitar and the use of chair percussion to evoke Celtic rock. "Dreams" includes "ethereal spaces" and a recurring two note pattern on the bass guitar. Nicks wrote the song in an afternoon and led the vocals, while the band played around her. The third track on Rumours, "Never Going Back Again", began as "Brushes", a simple acoustic guitar tune played by Buckingham, with snare rolls by Fleetwood using brushes; the band added vocals and further instrumental audio tracks to make it more layered. Inspired by triple step dancing patterns, "Don't Stop" includes both conventional acoustic and tack piano. In the latter instrument, nails are placed on the points where the hammers hit the strings, producing a more percussive sound. "Go Your Own Way" is more guitar-oriented and has a four-to-the-floor dance beat influenced by The Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man". The album's pace slows down with "Songbird", conceived solely by Christine McVie using a nine-foot Steinway piano.
Side two of Rumours begins with "The Chain", one of the record's most complicated compositions. A Christine McVie demo, "Keep Me There", and a Nicks song were re-cut in the studio and were heavily edited to form parts of the track. The whole of the band crafted the rest using an approach akin to creating a film score; John McVie provided a prominent solo using a fretless bass guitar, which marked a speeding up in tempo and the start of the song's final third. Inspired by R&B, "You Make Loving Fun" has a simpler composition and features a clavinet, a special type of keyboard instrument, while the rhythm section plays interlocking notes and beats. The ninth track on Rumours, "I Don't Want to Know", makes use of a twelve string guitar and harmonising vocals. Influenced by the music of Buddy Holly, Buckingham and Nicks created it in 1974 before they were in Fleetwood Mac. "Oh Daddy" was crafted spontaneously and includes improvised bass guitar patterns from John McVie and keyboard blips from Christine McVie. The album ends with "Gold Dust Woman", a song inspired by free jazz, which has music from a harpsichord, a Fender Stratocaster guitar, and a dobro, an acoustic guitar whose sound is produced by one or more metal cones.
## Critical reception
Rumours has been acclaimed by music critics since its release. Robert Christgau, reviewing in The Village Voice, described it as "more consistent and more eccentric" than its predecessor. He added that it "jumps right out of the speakers at you". Rolling Stone magazine's John Swenson believed the interplay among the three vocalists was one of the album's most pleasing elements; he stated, "Despite the interminable delay in finishing the record, Rumours proves that the success of Fleetwood Mac was no fluke." In a review for The New York Times, John Rockwell said the album is "a delightful disk, and one hopes the public thinks so, too", while Dave Marsh of the St. Petersburg Times claimed the songs are "as grandly glossy as anything right now". Robert Hilburn was less receptive and called Rumours a "frustratingly uneven" record in his review for the Los Angeles Times, while Juan Rodriguez of The Gazette suggested that, while the music is "crisper and clearer", Fleetwood Mac's ideas are "slightly more muddled". The album finished fourth in The Village Voice's 1977 Pazz & Jop critics' poll, which aggregated the votes of hundreds of prominent reviewers.
In a retrospective review, AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave Rumours five stars and noted that, regardless of the voyeuristic element, the record was "an unparalleled blockbuster" because of the music's quality; he concluded, "Each tune, each phrase regains its raw, immediate emotional power—which is why Rumours touched a nerve upon its 1977 release, and has since transcended its era to be one of the greatest, most compelling pop albums of all time." According to Slant Magazine's Barry Walsh, Fleetwood Mac drew on romantic dysfunction and personal turmoil to create a timeless, five-star record, while Andy Gill of The Independent claimed it "represents, along with The Eagles Greatest Hits, the high-water mark of America's Seventies rock-culture expansion, the quintessence of a counter-cultural mindset lured into coke-fuelled hedonism". In 2007, the BBC's Daryl Easlea labelled the sonic results as "near perfect", "like a thousand angels kissing you sweetly on the forehead", while Patrick McKay of Stylus Magazine wrote, "What distinguishes Rumours—what makes it art—is the contradiction between its cheerful surface and its anguished heart. Here is a radio-friendly record about anger, recrimination, and loss."
## Commercial performance
Rumours was a huge commercial success and became Fleetwood Mac's second US number-one record, following the 1975 eponymous release. It stayed at the top of the Billboard 200 for 31 non-consecutive weeks, while also reaching number one in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In May 2011 it re-entered Billboard 200 chart at number 11, and the Australian ARIA chart at number 2, due to several songs from the album being used for the "Rumours" episode of the American TV series Glee. It re-entered the Billboard 200 top ten in October 2020 in the wake of a viral TikTok by Nathan Apodaca which showed him skateboarding while "Dreams" played, even prompting Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks to create similar videos. The album was certified platinum in America and the UK within months of release after one million units and 300,000 units were shipped, respectively. All three major US trade publications—Billboard, Cash Box, and Record World—named it Album of the Year for 1977. After a debut at number seven, Rumours peaked at the top of the UK Albums Chart in January 1978, becoming Fleetwood Mac's first number one album in the country. In February, the band and co-producers Caillat and Dashut won the 1978 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. By March, the album had sold over 10 million copies worldwide, including over eight million in the US alone.
By 1980, 13 million copies of Rumours had been sold worldwide. As of 2017, sales were over 40 million copies. As of October 2019, Rumours has spent 800 weeks in the UK Top 100 album chart and is the 11th-best-selling album in UK history and is certified 14× platinum by the British Phonographic Industry, the equivalent of 4.2 million units shipped. The record has received a Diamond Award from the Recording Industry Association of America for a 20× platinum certification or 20 million copies shipped, making it, as of 2021, tied for the eleventh highest certified album in US history (by number of copies shipped). Rumours was the UK's bestselling album on vinyl during 2020, with the Official Charts Company confirming 32,500 annual sales in the format.
## Legacy
Mick Fleetwood has called Rumours "the most important album we ever made", because its success allowed the group to continue recording for years to come. Pop culture journalist Chuck Klosterman links the record's sales figures to its "really likable songs" but suggests that "no justification for greatness" is intrinsically provided by them. The Guardian collated worldwide data in 1997 from a range of renowned critics, artists, and radio DJs, who placed the record at number 78 in the list of the 100 Best Albums Ever. In 1998, Legacy: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours was produced by Fleetwood and released. The record contained each song of the original Rumours covered by a different act influenced by it. Among the musicians involved were alternative rock bands Tonic, Matchbox 20, and Goo Goo Dolls; Celtic rock groups The Corrs and The Cranberries; and singer-songwriters Elton John, Duncan Sheik, and Jewel. Other diverse acts influenced by Rumours include baroque pop artist Tori Amos, hard rock group Saliva, indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie, and art pop singer Lorde, who called it a "perfect record".
In 1998, Q placed Rumours at number three—behind The Clash's London Calling and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon—in its list of 50 Best Albums of the 70s. In 1999, Vibe featured it as one of 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century. In 2001, VH1 ranked the record at number 16 during its 100 Greatest Albums countdown, while Slant included it as one of 50 Essential Pop Albums. The same year, USA Today placed Rumours at number 23 in its Top 40 Albums list, while Rolling Stone ranked it at number 25 in its special issue of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", the highest Fleetwood Mac record, and 26 in a 2012 revised list. In 2000 it was voted number 31 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2006, Time named it in its All-TIME 100 Albums shortlist, while Mojo featured it in its unnumbered list of 70 from the 1970s: Decade's Greatest Albums. The record is included in both The Guardian's "1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die" and the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. For the 2013 reissue of the album, Pitchfork's Jessica Hopper gave the album a rare 10 out of 10, earning it a "best new reissue" designation.
## Track listing
Notes:
- "Silver Springs", written by Stevie Nicks, has been included on some reissues as either track 6, 7 or 12 of the album, depending on the pressing.
- Many cassette releases swapped the positions of "Second Hand News" and "I Don't Want to Know".
## Personnel
Adapted from the album's credits and AllMusic.
Fleetwood Mac
- Lindsey Buckingham – guitars, percussion, vocals
- Stevie Nicks – vocals
- Christine McVie – keyboards, vocals, vibraphone
- John McVie – bass guitar
- Mick Fleetwood – drums, percussion, harpsichord
Production
- Ken Caillat – producer, engineer
- Richard Dashut – producer, engineer
- Fleetwood Mac – producers
- Chris Morris – assistant engineer
- Ken Perry – mastering
- Charlie Watts – mastering
- Chris James – Immersive (ATMOS) mixing
- Brad Blackwood – Immersive (ATMOS) mastering
Artwork
- Desmond Strobel – design
- Larry Vigon – calligraphy
- Herbert W. Worthington – photography
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications and sales
## See also
- List of best-selling albums in Australia
|
32,897 |
William Shakespeare
| 1,173,249,029 |
English playwright and poet (1564–1616)
|
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William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".
## Life
### Early life
Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker) originally from Snitterfield in Warwickshire, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning family. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day. This date, which can be traced to William Oldys and George Steevens, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616. He was the third of eight children, and the eldest surviving son.
Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford, a free school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile (400 m) from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but grammar school curricula were largely similar: the basic Latin text was standardised by royal decree, and the school would have provided an intensive education in grammar based upon Latin classical authors.
At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage. The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times, and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596.
After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the "complaints bill" of a law case before the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589. Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years". Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him. Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London. John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his will. Little evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area.
### London and theatrical career
It is not known definitively when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592. By then, he was sufficiently known in London to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit:
> ... there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.
Scholars differ on the exact meaning of Greene's words, but most agree that Greene was accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match such university-educated writers as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Greene himself (the so-called "University Wits"). The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, along with the pun "Shake-scene", clearly identify Shakespeare as Greene's target. As used here, Johannes Factotum ("Jack of all trades") refers to a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the more common "universal genius".
Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's work in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks. After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new King James I, and changed its name to the King's Men.
In 1599, a partnership of members of the company built their own theatre on the south bank of the River Thames, which they named the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Extant records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that his association with the company made him a wealthy man, and in 1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, invested in a share of the parish tithes in Stratford.
Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, beginning in 1594, and by 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title pages. Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus His Fall (1603). The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for Jonson's Volpone is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end. The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged after Volpone, although one cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It, and the Chorus in Henry V, though scholars doubt the sources of that information.
Throughout his career, Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford. In 1596, the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames. He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the same year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there. By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There, he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of women's wigs and other headgear.
### Later years and death
Nicholas Rowe was the first biographer to record the tradition, repeated by Samuel Johnson, that Shakespeare retired to Stratford "some years before his death". He was still working as an actor in London in 1608; in an answer to the sharers' petition in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage stated that after purchasing the lease of the Blackfriars Theatre in 1608 from Henry Evans, the King's Men "placed men players" there, "which were Heminges, Condell, Shakespeare, etc.". However, it is perhaps relevant that the bubonic plague raged in London throughout 1609. The London public playhouses were repeatedly closed during extended outbreaks of the plague (a total of over 60 months closure between May 1603 and February 1610), which meant there was often no acting work. Retirement from all work was uncommon at that time. Shakespeare continued to visit London during the years 1611–1614. In 1612, he was called as a witness in Bellott v Mountjoy, a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. In March 1613, he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory; and from November 1614, he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall. After 1610, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613. His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house playwright of the King's Men. He retired in 1613, before the Globe Theatre burned down during the performance of Henry VIII on 29 June.
Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52. He died within a month of signing his will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in "perfect health". No extant contemporary source explains how or why he died. Half a century later, John Ward, the vicar of Stratford, wrote in his notebook: "Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted", not an impossible scenario since Shakespeare knew Jonson and Drayton. Of the tributes from fellow authors, one refers to his relatively sudden death: "We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went'st so soon / From the world's stage to the grave's tiring room."
He was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on 25 March 1616; the following day, his new son-in-law, Thomas Quiney was found guilty of fathering an illegitimate son by Margaret Wheeler, who had died during childbirth. Thomas was ordered by the church court to do public penance, which would have caused much shame and embarrassment for the Shakespeare family.
Shakespeare bequeathed the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna under stipulations that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body". The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying. The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct line. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one-third of his estate automatically. He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation. Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been the matrimonial bed and therefore rich in significance.
Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death. The epitaph carved into the stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in 2008:
<table>
<tbody>
<tr class="odd">
<td><p><poem style="font-style:roman;text-align:left" lang="">Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, To digg the dvst encloased heare. Bleste be yͤ man yͭ spares thes stones, And cvrst be he yͭ moves my bones. </poem></p></td>
<td><blockquote>
<p>Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.</p>
</blockquote></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Some time before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil. In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published. Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
## Plays
Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, as critics agree Shakespeare did, mostly early and late in his career.
The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI, written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date precisely, however, and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare's earliest period. His first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty. The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca. The Comedy of Errors was also based on classical models, but no source for The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though it is related to a separate play of the same name and may have derived from a folk story. Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve of rape, the Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics, directors, and audiences.
Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his most acclaimed comedies. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic Merchant of Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, which reflects dominant Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences. The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing, the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his mature work. This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death; and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which introduced a new kind of drama. According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in Julius Caesar, "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to infuse each other".
In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem plays" Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends Well and a number of his best known tragedies. Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, Hamlet, has probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy which begins "To be or not to be; that is the question". Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, the heroes of the tragedies that followed, Othello and King Lear, are undone by hasty errors of judgement. The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves. In Othello, the villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him. In King Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia. According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play...offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty". In Macbeth, the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies, uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful king and usurp the throne until their own guilt destroys them in turn. In this play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic structure. His last major tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, contain some of Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies by the poet and critic T. S. Eliot.
In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, as well as the collaboration, Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Some commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day. Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.
### Classification
Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed according to their folio classification as comedies, histories, and tragedies. Two plays not included in the First Folio, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, are now accepted as part of the canon, with today's scholars agreeing that Shakespeare made major contributions to the writing of both. No Shakespearean poems were included in the First Folio.
In the late 19th century, Edward Dowden classified four of the late comedies as romances, and though many scholars prefer to call them tragicomedies, Dowden's term is often used. In 1896, Frederick S. Boas coined the term "problem plays" to describe four plays: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and Hamlet. "Dramas as singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies", he wrote. "We may, therefore, borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of today and class them together as Shakespeare's problem plays." The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use, though Hamlet is definitively classed as a tragedy.
### Performances
It is not clear for which companies Shakespeare wrote his early plays. The title page of the 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus reveals that the play had been acted by three different troupes. After the plagues of 1592–93, Shakespeare's plays were performed by his own company at The Theatre and the Curtain in Shoreditch, north of the Thames. Londoners flocked there to see the first part of Henry IV, Leonard Digges recording, "Let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest ... and you scarce shall have a room". When the company found themselves in dispute with their landlord, they pulled The Theatre down and used the timbers to construct the Globe Theatre, the first playhouse built by actors for actors, on the south bank of the Thames at Southwark. The Globe opened in autumn 1599, with Julius Caesar one of the first plays staged. Most of Shakespeare's greatest post-1599 plays were written for the Globe, including Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.
After the Lord Chamberlain's Men were renamed the King's Men in 1603, they entered a special relationship with the new King James. Although the performance records are patchy, the King's Men performed seven of Shakespeare's plays at court between 1 November 1604, and 31 October 1605, including two performances of The Merchant of Venice. After 1608, they performed at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre during the winter and the Globe during the summer. The indoor setting, combined with the Jacobean fashion for lavishly staged masques, allowed Shakespeare to introduce more elaborate stage devices. In Cymbeline, for example, Jupiter descends "in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. The ghosts fall on their knees."
The actors in Shakespeare's company included the famous Richard Burbage, William Kempe, Henry Condell and John Heminges. Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, among other characters. He was replaced around 1600 by Robert Armin, who played roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It and the fool in King Lear. In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that Henry VIII "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and ceremony". On 29 June, however, a cannon set fire to the thatch of the Globe and burned the theatre to the ground, an event which pinpoints the date of a Shakespeare play with rare precision.
### Textual sources
In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's friends from the King's Men, published the First Folio, a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It contained 36 texts, including 18 printed for the first time. The others had already appeared in quarto versions—flimsy books made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves. No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies".
Alfred Pollard termed some of the pre-1623 versions as "bad quartos" because of their adapted, paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed from memory. Where several versions of a play survive, each differs from the other. The differences may stem from copying or printing errors, from notes by actors or audience members, or from Shakespeare's own papers. In some cases, for example, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, and Othello, Shakespeare could have revised the texts between the quarto and folio editions. In the case of King Lear, however, while most modern editions do conflate them, the 1623 folio version is so different from the 1608 quarto that the Oxford Shakespeare prints them both, arguing that they cannot be conflated without confusion.
## Poems
In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on sexual themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus; while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin. Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses, the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust. Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote A Lover's Complaint. Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects. The Phoenix and the Turtle, printed in Robert Chester's 1601 Love's Martyr, mourns the deaths of the legendary phoenix and his lover, the faithful turtle dove. In 1599, two early drafts of sonnets 138 and 144 appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim, published under Shakespeare's name but without his permission.
### Sonnets
Published in 1609, the Sonnets were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed. Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership. Even before the two unauthorised sonnets appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599, Francis Meres had referred in 1598 to Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets among his private friends". Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence. He seems to have planned two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a married woman of dark complexion (the "dark lady"), and one about conflicted love for a fair young man (the "fair youth"). It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial "I" who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart".
The 1609 edition was dedicated to a "Mr. W.H.", credited as "the only begetter" of the poems. It is not known whether this was written by Shakespeare himself or by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, whose initials appear at the foot of the dedication page; nor is it known who Mr. W.H. was, despite numerous theories, or whether Shakespeare even authorised the publication. Critics praise the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time.
## Style
Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in a stylised language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the drama. The poetry depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical—written for actors to declaim rather than speak. The grand speeches in Titus Andronicus, in the view of some critics, often hold up the action, for example; and the verse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona has been described as stilted.
However, Shakespeare soon began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. The opening soliloquy of Richard III has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama. At the same time, Richard's vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soliloquies of Shakespeare's mature plays. No single play marks a change from the traditional to the freer style. Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles. By the time of Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself.
Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter. In practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines, with the risk of monotony. Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet. Shakespeare uses it, for example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind:
> > Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly— And prais'd be rashness for it—let us know Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well ...
After Hamlet, Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies. The literary critic A. C. Bradley described this style as "more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical". In the last phase of his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve these effects. These included run-on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length. In Macbeth, for example, the language darts from one unrelated metaphor or simile to another: "was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed yourself?" (1.7.35–38); "... pity, like a naked new-born babe/ Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air ..." (1.7.21–25). The listener is challenged to complete the sense. The late romances, with their shifts in time and surprising turns of plot, inspired a last poetic style in which long and short sentences are set against one another, clauses are piled up, subject and object are reversed, and words are omitted, creating an effect of spontaneity.
Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a practical sense of the theatre. Like all playwrights of the time, he dramatised stories from sources such as Plutarch and Holinshed. He reshaped each plot to create several centres of interest and to show as many sides of a narrative to the audience as possible. This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting, and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama. As Shakespeare's mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and distinctive patterns of speech. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however. In Shakespeare's late romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre.
## Legacy
### Influence
Shakespeare's work has made a significant and lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, and genre. Until Romeo and Juliet, for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy. Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events, but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds. His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success. Critic George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson as "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes." John Milton, considered by many to be the most important English poet after Shakespeare, wrote in tribute: "Thou in our wonder and astonishment/ Has built thyself a live-long monument."
Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens. The American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King Lear. Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare's works. These include three operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff, whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays. Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites, while William Hogarth's 1745 painting of actor David Garrick playing Richard III was decisive in establishing the genre of theatrical portraiture in Britain. The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a friend of William Blake, even translated Macbeth into German. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular, that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature. Shakespeare has been a rich source for filmmakers; Akira Kurosawa adapted Macbeth and King Lear as Throne of Blood and Ran, respectively. Other examples of Shakespeare on film include Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Laurence Olivier's Hamlet and Al Pacino's documentary Looking For Richard. Orson Welles, a lifelong lover of Shakespeare, directed and starred in films of Macbeth and Othello, and Chimes at Midnight, in which he plays John Falstaff, which Welles himself called his best work.
In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling, and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now, and his use of language helped shape modern English. Samuel Johnson quoted him more often than any other author in his A Dictionary of the English Language, the first serious work of its type. Expressions such as "with bated breath" (Merchant of Venice) and "a foregone conclusion" (Othello) have found their way into everyday English speech.
Shakespeare's influence extends far beyond his native England and the English language. His reception in Germany was particularly significant; as early as the 18th century Shakespeare was widely translated and popularised in Germany, and gradually became a "classic of the German Weimar era;" Christoph Martin Wieland was the first to produce complete translations of Shakespeare's plays in any language. Actor and theatre director Simon Callow writes, "this master, this titan, this genius, so profoundly British and so effortlessly universal, each different culture – German, Italian, Russian – was obliged to respond to the Shakespearean example; for the most part, they embraced it, and him, with joyous abandon, as the possibilities of language and character in action that he celebrated liberated writers across the continent. Some of the most deeply affecting productions of Shakespeare have been non-English, and non-European. He is that unique writer: he has something for everyone."
According to Guinness World Records, Shakespeare remains the world's best-selling playwright, with sales of his plays and poetry believed to have achieved in excess of four billion copies in the almost 400 years since his death. He is also the third most translated author in history.
### Critical reputation
Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he received a large amount of praise. In 1598, the cleric and author Francis Meres singled him out from a group of English playwrights as "the most excellent" in both comedy and tragedy. The authors of the Parnassus plays at St John's College, Cambridge, numbered him with Chaucer, Gower, and Spenser. In the First Folio, Ben Jonson called Shakespeare the "Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage", although he had remarked elsewhere that "Shakespeare wanted art" (lacked skill).
Between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson. Thomas Rymer, for example, condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic with the tragic. Nevertheless, poet and critic John Dryden rated Shakespeare highly, saying of Jonson, "I admire him, but I love Shakespeare". He also famously remarked that Shakespeare "was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there." For several decades, Rymer's view held sway. But during the 18th century, critics began to respond to Shakespeare on his own terms and, like Dryden, to acclaim what they termed his natural genius. A series of scholarly editions of his work, notably those of Samuel Johnson in 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790, added to his growing reputation. By 1800, he was firmly enshrined as the national poet, and described as the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). In the 18th and 19th centuries, his reputation also spread abroad. Among those who championed him were the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal, and Victor Hugo.
During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German Romanticism. In the 19th century, critical admiration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered on adulation. "This King Shakespeare," the essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1840, "does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying signs; indestructible". The Victorians produced his plays as lavish spectacles on a grand scale. The playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw mocked the cult of Shakespeare worship as "bardolatry", claiming that the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare obsolete.
The modernist revolution in the arts during the early 20th century, far from discarding Shakespeare, eagerly enlisted his work in the service of the avant-garde. The Expressionists in Germany and the Futurists in Moscow mounted productions of his plays. Marxist playwright and director Bertolt Brecht devised an epic theatre under the influence of Shakespeare. The poet and critic T. S. Eliot argued against Shaw that Shakespeare's "primitiveness" in fact made him truly modern. Eliot, along with G. Wilson Knight and the school of New Criticism, led a movement towards a closer reading of Shakespeare's imagery. In the 1950s, a wave of new critical approaches replaced modernism and paved the way for post-modern studies of Shakespeare. By the 1980s, Shakespeare studies were open to movements such as structuralism, feminism, New Historicism, African-American studies, and queer studies. Comparing Shakespeare's accomplishments to those of leading figures in philosophy and theology, Harold Bloom wrote, "Shakespeare was larger than Plato and than St. Augustine. He encloses us because we see with his fundamental perceptions."
In August 2023, restrictions were placed on the teaching of Shakespearean plays and literature by Florida teachers in order to comply with state law.
## Speculation
### Authorship
Around 230 years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship of the works attributed to him. Proposed alternative candidates include Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Several "group theories" have also been proposed. All but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe theory, with only a small minority of academics who believe that there is reason to question the traditional attribution, but interest in the subject, particularly the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, continues into the 21st century.
### Religion
Shakespeare conformed to the official state religion, but his private views on religion have been the subject of debate. Shakespeare's will uses a Protestant formula, and he was a confirmed member of the Church of England, where he was married, his children were baptised, and where he is buried. Some scholars claim that members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time when practising Catholicism in England was against the law. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, certainly came from a pious Catholic family. The strongest evidence might be a Catholic statement of faith signed by his father, John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in the rafters of his former house in Henley Street. However, the document is now lost and scholars differ as to its authenticity. In 1591, the authorities reported that John Shakespeare had missed church "for fear of process for debt", a common Catholic excuse. In 1606, the name of William's daughter Susanna appears on a list of those who failed to attend Easter communion in Stratford. Other authors argue that there is a lack of evidence about Shakespeare's religious beliefs. Scholars find evidence both for and against Shakespeare's Catholicism, Protestantism, or lack of belief in his plays, but the truth may be impossible to prove.
### Sexuality
Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 1583. Over the centuries, some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical, and point to them as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than romantic love. The 26 so-called "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons.
### Portraiture
No written contemporary description of Shakespeare's physical appearance survives, and no evidence suggests that he ever commissioned a portrait, so the Droeshout engraving, which Ben Jonson approved of as a good likeness, and his Stratford monument provide perhaps the best evidence of his appearance. From the 18th century, the desire for authentic Shakespeare portraits fuelled claims that various surviving pictures depicted Shakespeare. That demand also led to the production of several fake portraits, as well as misattributions, repaintings, and relabelling of portraits of other people.
## See also
- Outline of William Shakespeare
- English Renaissance theatre
- Spelling of Shakespeare's name
- World Shakespeare Bibliography''
|
17,215,073 |
The Unnatural (The X-Files)
| 1,173,826,262 | null |
[
"1999 American television episodes",
"Baseball on television in the United States",
"Roswell incident in fiction",
"Television episodes about alien visitations",
"Television episodes about murder",
"Television episodes about the Ku Klux Klan",
"Television episodes directed by David Duchovny",
"Television episodes set in Georgia (U.S. state)",
"Television episodes set in New Mexico",
"Television episodes written by David Duchovny",
"The X-Files (season 6) episodes"
] |
"The Unnatural" is the 19th episode of the sixth season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files, which first aired on April 25, 1999, on the Fox network. Written and directed by lead actor David Duchovny, the episode is tangentially connected to the wider mythology of The X-Files, but narratively functions as a "Monster-of-the-Week" story. "The Unnatural" earned a Nielsen household rating of 10.1, and its first broadcast was watched by 16.88 million people. The episode received positive reviews from critics, and was well-liked by members of the cast and crew, including series creator Chris Carter and co-star Gillian Anderson.
The series centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called "X-Files". Mulder is a believer; although the skeptical Scully was initially assigned to debunk his work, the two have developed a deep friendship. In this episode, Arthur Dales (M. Emmet Walsh), the brother of a previously recurring retired FBI agent with the same name, tells Mulder the story of a black baseball player who played for the Roswell Grays in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 under the pseudonym "Josh Exley" (Jesse L. Martin). Exley was actually an alien with a love of baseball. Exley is later tracked down by the Alien Bounty Hunter (Brian Thompson) and executed for betraying his people.
Among other things, the episode was inspired by the history of baseball in Roswell, as well as the infamous 1947 Roswell Incident. Jesse Martin was offered the lead guest role as Exley after Duchovny noticed him in a production of the musical Rent and an episode of Ally McBeal. Originally, Darren McGavin reprised his role as Arthur Dales, but after he suffered a stroke, he was replaced by Walsh. Many of the outdoor baseball scenes were filmed at Jay Littleton Ballfield, an all-wood stadium located in Ontario, California. The episode has been critically examined for its use of literary motifs, its fairy tale-like structure, and its themes concerning racism and alienation.
## Plot
In 1947, a mixed group of black and white men play baseball in Roswell, New Mexico. A group of Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members arrive on horseback, seeking one of the players: Josh Exley (Jesse L. Martin), a talented black baseball player. Men from the team fight back against the KKK, and when the mask of the clan's leader is taken off, the leader is revealed to be an alien.
In 1999, FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) look through Roswell newspapers from the 1940s. Mulder spots an article showing a young Arthur Dales (Fredric Lehne)—the original investigator of the X-Files division—Josh Exley, and the shape-shifting Alien Bounty Hunter (Brian Thompson). Mulder seeks out Dales in Washington D.C. but instead, meets Dales's brother (M. Emmet Walsh), who is also named Arthur.
In flashback, Dales tells Mulder about first meeting Exley in 1947. Dales, a member of the Roswell Police Department, has been assigned to protect a hesitant Exley. Dales travels with Exley and his teammates on their bus, and one night sees that the sleeping Exley is reflected in a window as an alien. The next day, during a game, Exley is hit by a pitch and starts making utterances in a strange language before returning to his senses. Afterwards, Dales notices that a mysterious green ooze appeared where Exley's bleeding head had rested.
Dales decides to investigate Exley's hometown of Macon, Georgia, and discovers that a boy with Exley's name had vanished about five years previously. That night at the hotel, Dales hears noises from Exley's room and breaks in, only to find Exley in his alien form. Exley tells Dales that he was forbidden from intermingling with the human race but fell in love with the game of baseball and remained on Earth. Exley took the form of a black man and played in the Negro leagues to avoid attracting attention. When major league scouts appear at one game, Exley deliberately performs poorly.
The Alien Bounty Hunter, who has been pursuing the renegade alien, takes Exley's form and murders a scientist who is investigating the green ooze that Dales found. Dales warns Exley that he is now wanted by the police, and Exley goes into hiding. The narrative returns to the events at the start of the episode. The KKK leader is revealed as the Alien Bounty Hunter, who has arrived to assassinate Exley. The Bounty Hunter demands that Exley revert to his true form before he dies. Exley refuses and the Bounty Hunter kills him. However, Exley bleeds red, human blood.
## Production
### Conception and writing
"The Unnatural" was the first episode of The X-Files that Duchovny wrote by himself. (He had previously co-developed the stories for the second season episodes "Colony" and "Anasazi" - both with series creator Chris Carter, and received teleplay credits for the third season episodes "Avatar" and "Talitha Cumi".) Prior to the show's sixth season, Duchovny felt that he did not have the skills necessary; he said, "I didn't have the surety, the confidence in my mind, that I could write a teleplay ... It took me to the sixth year of the show to actually sit down and write one of my ideas." In late 1998, Duchovny eventually felt secure in his abilities and approached series creator Chris Carter about working on an episode; Carter agreed to the request, and a late-season installment was slated for Duchovny to write.
While both Duchovny and Carter had wanted to write an episode about baseball for several years, Duchovny first conceived the basic premise for "The Unnatural" during the home run race in 1998 between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa when he read a newspaper report about Joe Bauman. Bauman was a baseball player who, despite hitting a record 72 home runs during the 1954 season, never played in the Major Leagues. Duchovny immediately connected the story of Bauman, who played for the Roswell Rockets, with the 1947 Roswell Incident, saying "I just made the association ... What if this guy was an alien? and I just started working on that idea." Duchovny later said that "these happy chronological coincidences" facilitated the development of the story.
Inspired by the story of Jackie Robinson (who was the first black player who was accepted into the Major Leagues in the 1940s), Duchovny decided to make the lead character black and set the story before the integration of the baseball leagues. After Duchovny finished his first draft, Carter added additional plot points, such as the inclusion of the Alien Bounty Hunter and retired FBI agent Arthur Dales. Duchovny largely worked on his ideas alone—a fact that he was later very proud of. The episode title is a play on the novel and movie The Natural. The tagline that appears in the opening credits for this episode is "In the Big Inning", which serves as a pun on the phrase, "In the beginning".
### Casting
Jesse L. Martin was the first actor considered for the part of Exley. Duchovny had first noticed Martin in a production of the musical Rent, and noticed him again during a guest appearance on the Fox legal comedy-drama Ally McBeal. Watching the latter performance, Duchovny decided that Martin had the "right feel" for the lead role. Duchovny later noted that he had little involvement with the casting process since a majority of the characters in the episode were recurring.
Originally, Darren McGavin was set to reprise his role as Arthur Dales; the character had previously appeared in the fifth-season episode "Travelers" and the sixth-season episode "Agua Mala". Unfortunately, two days into filming, McGavin suffered a stroke, forcing Duchovny and the producers to scrap the few scenes he had shot, rewrite the script to explain his absence, and replace his character with M. Emmet Walsh. Because many of the scenes featuring a younger Dales had already been shot, Duchovny was forced to give Walsh's character the same name as McGavin's character; this was justified in the episode as a quirk on behalf of the two brothers' parents. The two scenes that were filmed with McGavin included the sequence in which Mulder asks Dales whether all great baseball players are aliens, and a scene in which Mulder asks Dales why he joined the FBI. McGavin eventually recovered and allowed his scenes to be included on the sixth season DVD as bonus features. Executive producer Frank Spotnitz later called it a "great sorrow that" the show had to replace Darren McGavin because the series' producers were "huge fans" of his role in the 1972 film The Night Stalker and television series of the same name.
Actor Fredric Lehne had previously appeared in "Travelers," playing the younger version of McGavin's character. Since McGavin was written out of the episode, Lehne played the younger version of Walsh's character. Los Angeles Dodgers radio announcer Vin Scully (whose name served as the inspiration for Dana Scully's name) played the baseball announcer in this episode. The announcer was initially unable to appear owing to budgetary issues, but later agreed to record his part for free. Daniel Duchovny, David's brother, appeared in this episode in a minor role as a bench jockey.
### Filming and post-production
"The Unnatural" was the first episode of the series to be directed by Duchovny, which had been decided when Duchovny was working on plot points with Carter. As the episode, made up mostly of flashbacks, did not heavily feature his character, Duchovny was able to focus on pre-production. This narratological method also gave Anderson a minor respite from her work. While Duchovny later expressed gratitude that "The Unnatural" enabled him to get a feel for directing, he also experienced severe anxiety during the production process because of the stress that helming an episode produced. However, when the episode was finished, Duchovny was pleased, calling the results "great." He later noted that his stress was largely uncalled for because the episode would have been made even "if [he] just showed up and drooled for 24 hours a day."
The first five seasons of the series were mainly filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, but production of the show's sixth season was based in Los Angeles, California. Jay Littleton Ballfield, an all-wood stadium located in Ontario, California, was used as the setting for the Roswell Baseball Stadium. The show's producers advertised in local media for fans to attend the game dressed in period clothing. During filming, a raffle was held between takes, and signed copies of The X-Files''' movie, soundtrack, and film poster were given away. The scene featuring Mulder teaching Scully how to play baseball was filmed at Cheviot Hills Park in Los Angeles. The park was later used in the eighth season episode "Three Words" and the ninth season episode "Lord of the Flies".
Costume designer Christine Peters crafted the episode's baseball uniforms after visiting Sports Robe, a Hollywood costume house. Dena Green from the hair department gave extras haircuts so that they would be in the style of the 1940s. Car coordinator Kelly Padovich secured the use of two 1947 model Flxible buses for the Roswell Grays on-bus scenes, as well as various other contemporary vehicles. Researcher Lee Smith worked with the Baseball Hall of Fame to ensure the accuracy of the statistics used in the episode. The props department developed from scratch the Peter Rosebud Bank that Dales shows Mulder; property master Tom Day later noted that it was "one of the most expensive props" of the season. The score for the episode, written by the series' composer Mark Snow, was recorded with the help of musicians Nick Kirgo and Tommy Morgan—a first for the series (which had previously relied solely on synthesizers for its soundtrack).
## Themes
Near the beginning of the episode, Mulder uses one of William Blake's "Proverbs of Hell" from his 18th century book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in an argument with Scully: "The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom." Sharon R. Yang, in her essay "Weaving and Unweaving the Story," writes that Mulder is using affluent literature to "justify his passionate dedication to questing for knowledge in arcane areas scorned by mainstream intellectual authority". In addition, Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson, in their book Wanting to Believe: A Critical Guide to The X-Files, Millennium & The Lone Gunmen, argue that the episode functions as a fairy tale, and that its conclusion, while sad, is nevertheless an example of a happy ending; Exley bleeds red blood as he lays dying, granting the alien his wish "to be a man." In addition, the two mused that the meta nature of the episode is similar to the way fans of the series reacted to new episodes of The X-Files.
Ideas of racism and segregation also permeate the episode. Sara Gwenllian-Jones in her book Cult Television argues that, throughout the entry, "the blacks are equated with aliens," turning them into a certain type of "other" that is "never allowed to fit in or feel safe". Gwenllian-Jones highlights the scene in which Dales, late one night on the team bus, wakes to see Exley's sleeping body being reflected as an alien in a window as an example of the racial comparison. She points out that, despite coming to Earth, Exley has moved from one segregated society—that of the aliens—into another. She points out that Exley, after revealing his true form to Dales, says that "my people guard their privacy zealously. They don't want our people to intermingle with your people". This quote expresses a similar sentiment to the segregated mentality of the 1940s.
## Broadcast and reception
### Ratings
"The Unnatural" originally aired in the United States on the Fox network on April 25, 1999, and was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on Sky 1 on July 4, 1999. In the U.S., the episode was watched by 16.88 million viewers, and ranked as the 17th most-watched episode of any series on network TV for the week ending April 25. It earned a Nielsen household rating of 10.1, with a 15 share. Nielsen ratings are audience measurement systems that determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the U.S. This means that roughly 10.1 percent of all television-equipped households, and 15 percent of households watching television, were watching the episode. In the U.K., "The Unnatural" was seen by 870,000 viewers, making it the channel's second-most watched program for that week after an episode of The Simpsons. On November 5, 2002, the episode was released on DVD as part of the complete sixth season.
### Reviews
The cast and crew of the show were complimentary towards the finished episode. Carter said, "I think that David, a person who has a very intimate understanding of the show, made the best of his opportunity to tell a very different kind of X-File, and expand the elastic show that it is." Anderson was also pleased, saying, "I was proud of David for writing the script. I thought it was wonderful. He was kind and gentle and respectful and humble, and always tried to do his best."
Initial reviews were positive. Eric Mink from the New York Daily News, in a pre-premiere review, said that it "ingeniously grafts classic X-Files story elements and wry, self-mocking wit onto a delightfully fresh premise". The Lexington Herald-Leader's review was mostly positive, complimenting the clever writing and noting that the "show was full of visual delights". Sarah Stegall awarded the episode five points out of five, praising Duchovny's analysis of "bigotry from two angles" and his ability to tie the "ongoing X-Files conspiracy arc ... into a comic tragedy like this". Stegall also called Duchovny's direction "innovative and interesting", and applauded a transition scene, in which the camera apparently moves through a television screen, as "a wonderful visual metaphor for The X-Files itself".
Paula Vitaris from Cinefantastique gave the episode a largely positive review, awarding it four stars out of four. Vitaris was complimentary towards the episode's exposition, and wrote, "above all, 'The Unnatural' is about the power of storytelling. We don't really know if Dales' story is true or if it's the liquor-fueled ramblings of a broken-down man, but in the end, this is irrelevant." Melissa Runstrom from Michigan Daily called it a "charming independent story," but that it "seems to say more about the human condition than about any extraterrestrial plot". Tom Kessenich, in his book Examinations: An Unauthorized Look at Seasons 6–9 of the X-Files wrote, "In his entertaining debut as an X-Files writer/director, Duchovny took us down a very familiar path this season: [humor]. But unlike some previous navigators, Duchovny stayed on course, made sure we saw all of the spectacular landmarks along the way and, when we reached our final destination, I found I thoroughly enjoyed the ride."
Recent reviews have also applauded the episode. Shearman and Pearson rated the episode five stars out of five, describing it as "[a] delightful ... comic fable". Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club awarded the episode an "A−" and wrote that it "works because it takes this very silly idea and proceeds to take it seriously." She criticized the program for its "corniness" and its reliance on the "magical black guy" stereotype, but concluded that "The Unnatural" was successful "because it embraces this side of the show’s profile [that] could do something sweet and lovely and moving". VanDerWerff also complimented Martin's performance, calling his acting "terrific". Cynthia Fuchs from PopMatters wrote that Duchovny's directing debut was excellent.
Since its debut, the episode has been ranked as one of the best episodes of The X-Files. Kessenich named it one of the "Top 25 Episode of All Time" of The X-Files, ranking it at number six. The Vancouver Sun listed "The Unnatural" on their list of the best standalone episodes of the show, and said that the story was heartbreaking. In addition, the closing scene featuring Mulder teaching Scully to play baseball was well received by critics. Shearman and Pearson wrote that it "is especially delightful, and gives this sentimental episode an extra warm glow." Jean Helms of The Mobile Register named it one of the "Top 10 X-Files Clips We'd Like to See in the Official Video of Bree Sharp's 'David Duchovny'". Vitaris called the scene "one of the most charming finales in an X-Files episode" due to its "utterly endearing" qualities and its "unspoken subtext".
## See also
- "Hollywood A.D.", the second episode of The X-Files'' written and directed by Duchovny
- "William", the third episode written and directed by Duchovny
|
5,482,854 |
Spacewar!
| 1,171,970,547 |
1962 video game
|
[
"1962 video games",
"Early history of video games",
"Mainframe games",
"Multiplayer video games",
"Public-domain software with source code",
"Science fiction video games",
"Space combat simulators",
"Video games developed in the United States",
"Video games with available source code",
"World Video Game Hall of Fame"
] |
Spacewar! is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell in collaboration with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and others. It was written for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 minicomputer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After its initial creation, Spacewar! was expanded further by other students and employees of universities in the area, including Dan Edwards and Peter Samson. It was also spread to many of the few dozen installations of the PDP-1 computer, making Spacewar! the first known video game to be played at multiple computer installations.
The game features two spaceships, "the needle" and "the wedge", engaged in a dogfight while maneuvering in the gravity well of a star. Both ships are controlled by human players. Each ship has limited weaponry and fuel for maneuvering, and the ships remain in motion even when the player is not accelerating. Flying near the star to provide a gravity assist was a common tactic. Ships are destroyed when they collide with a torpedo, the star, or each other. At any time, the player can engage a hyperspace feature to move to a new and random location on the screen, though in some versions each use has an increasing chance of destroying the ship instead. The game was initially controlled with switches on the PDP-1, though Bob Saunders built an early gamepad to reduce the difficulty and awkwardness of controlling the game.
Spacewar! is one of the most important and influential games in the early history of video games. It was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and the public domain code was widely ported to and recreated on other computer systems at the time, especially after computer systems with monitors became more widespread towards the end of the decade. It has also been recreated in more modern programming languages for PDP-1 emulators. It directly inspired many other electronic games, such as the first commercial arcade video games, Galaxy Game and Computer Space (1971), and later games such as Asteroids (1979). In 2007, Spacewar! was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time, which formed the start of the game canon at the Library of Congress, and in 2018 it was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame by The Strong and the International Center for the History of Electronic Games.
## Background
During the 1950s, various computer games were created in the context of academic computer and programming research and for demonstrations of computing power, especially after the introduction later in the decade of smaller and faster computers on which programs could be created and run in real time as opposed to being executed on a schedule. A few programs, however, were intended both to showcase the power of the computer they ran on and as entertainment products; these were generally created by undergraduate and graduate students and university employees, such as at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where staff and students were allowed on occasion to develop programs for the TX-0 experimental computer. These interactive graphical games were created by a community of programmers, many of them students and university employees affiliated with the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC), led by Alan Kotok, Peter Samson, and Bob Saunders. The games included Tic-Tac-Toe, which used a light pen to play a simple game of noughts and crosses against the computer, and Mouse in the Maze, which used a light pen to set up a maze of walls for a virtual mouse to traverse.
In September 1961, a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-1 minicomputer was installed in the "kludge room" on the 2nd floor of Building 26, the location of the MIT Electrical Engineering Department. The PDP-1 was to complement the older TX-0, and like it had a punched tape reader and writer, and additionally accepted input from a panel of switches and could output to a cathode-ray tube display. Over the summer before its arrival a group of students and university employees had been pondering ideas for programs that would demonstrate the new computer's capabilities in a compelling way. Three of them—Steve Russell, then an employee at Harvard University and a former research assistant at MIT; Martin Graetz, a research assistant and former student at MIT; and Wayne Wiitanen, a research assistant at Harvard and former employee and student at MIT—came up with the idea for Spacewar!. They referred to their collaboration as the "Hingham Institute" as Graetz and Wiitanen were living in a tenement building on Hingham Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "We had this brand new PDP-1", Steve Russell told Rolling Stone in a 1972 interview. "Somebody [Marvin Minsky] had built some little pattern-generating programs which made interesting patterns like a kaleidoscope. Not a very good demonstration. Here was this display that could do all sorts of good things! So we started talking about it, figuring what would be interesting displays. We decided that probably you could make a two-dimensional maneuvering sort of thing, and decided that naturally the obvious thing to do was spaceships."
## Gameplay
The gameplay of Spacewar! involves two monochrome spaceships called "the needle" and "the wedge", each controlled by a player, attempting to shoot one another while maneuvering on a two-dimensional plane in the gravity well of a star, set against the backdrop of a starfield. The ships fire torpedoes, which are not affected by the gravitational pull of the star. The ships have a limited number of torpedoes and supply of fuel, which is used when the player fires the ship's thrusters. Torpedoes are fired one at a time by flipping a toggle switch on the computer or pressing a button on the control pad, and there is a cooldown period between launches. The ships remain in motion even when the player is not accelerating, and rotating the ships does not change the direction of their motion, though the ships can rotate at a constant rate without inertia.
Each player controls one of the ships and must attempt to shoot down the other ship while avoiding a collision with the star or the opposing ship. Flying near the star can provide a gravity assist to the player at the risk of misjudging the trajectory and falling into the star. If a ship moves past one edge of the screen, it reappears on the other side in a wraparound effect. A hyperspace feature, or "panic button", can be used as a last-ditch means to evade enemy torpedoes by moving the player's ship to another location on the screen after it disappears for a few seconds, but the reentry from hyperspace occurs at a random location, and in some versions there is an increasing probability of the ship exploding with each use.
Player controls include clockwise and counterclockwise rotation, forward thrust, firing torpedoes, and hyperspace. Initially, these were controlled using the front-panel test switches on the PDP-1 minicomputer, with four switches for each player, but these proved to be awkward to use and wore out quickly under normal gameplay, as well as causing players to accidentally flip the computer's control and power switches. The location of the switches also left one player off to one side of the CRT display due to the limited space in front of the computer, which left them at a disadvantage. To alleviate these problems, Saunders created a detached control device, essentially an early gamepad. The gamepad had a switch for turning left or right, another for forward thrust or hyperspace, and a torpedo launch button. The button was silent so that the opposing player would not have a warning that the player was attempting to fire a torpedo during a cooldown period.
## Development
Russell, Graetz and Wiitanen developed the basic Spacewar! concept in the summer of 1961, in anticipation of the PDP-1 being installed. Russell had recently finished reading the Lensman series by E. E. "Doc" Smith and thought the stories would make a good basis for the program. "His heroes had a strong tendency to get pursued by the villain across the galaxy and have to invent their way out of their problem while they were being pursued. That sort of action was the thing that suggested Spacewar!. He had some very glowing descriptions of spaceship encounters and space fleet maneuvers." Other influences cited by fellow programmer Martin Graetz include E. E. Smith's Skylark novels and Japanese pulp fiction tokusatsu movies.
For the first few months after its installation, the PDP-1 programming community at MIT focused on simpler programs to work out how to create software for the computer. During this period, Russell visited his old friends in the community frequently and described the Spacewar! concept to them. Russell hoped someone would implement the game, but had no plans to do so himself. Other members of the community felt he was the logical choice to create the game, however, and began pressuring him to program it. In response, Russell began providing various excuses as to why he could not do so. One of these was the lack of a trigonometric function routine needed to calculate the trajectories of the spacecraft. This prompted Alan Kotok of the TMRC to call DEC, who informed him that they had such a routine already written. Kotok drove to DEC to pick up a tape containing the code, slammed it down in front of Russell, and asked what other excuses he had. Russell, later explaining that "I looked around and I didn't find an excuse, so I had to settle down and do some figuring", started writing the code around the time that the PDP-1's display was installed at the end of December 1961. The game was developed to meet three precepts Russell, Graetz, and Wiitanen had developed for creating a program that functioned equally well as an entertainment experience for the players and as a demonstration for spectators: to use as much of the computer's resources as possible, to be consistently interesting and therefore have every run be different, and to be entertaining and therefore a game. It took Russell, with assistance from the other programmers—including Bob Saunders and Steve Piner (but not Wiitanen, who had been called up by the United States Army Reserve)—about 200 total hours to write the first version of Spacewar!, or around six weeks to develop the basic game. It was written in the PDP-1's assembly language.
Russell had a program with a movable dot before the end of January 1962, and an early operational game with rotatable spaceships by February. The two spaceships were designed to evoke the curvy spaceship from Buck Rogers stories and the PGM-11 Redstone rocket. That early version also contained a randomly generated background star field, initially added by Russell because a blank background made it difficult to tell the relative motion of the two spaceships at slow speeds. The programming community in the area, including the Hingham Institute and the TMRC, had developed what was later termed the "hacker ethic", whereby all programs were freely shared and modified by other programmers in a collaborative environment without concern for ownership or copyright, which led to a group effort to elaborate on Russell's initial Spacewar! game. Consequently, since the inaccuracy and lack of realism in the starfield annoyed TMRC member Peter Samson, he wrote a program based on real star charts that scrolled slowly through the night sky, including every star in a band between 22.5° N and 22.5° S down to the fifth magnitude, displayed at their relative brightness. The program was called "Expensive Planetarium"—referring to the high price of the PDP-1 computer compared to an analog planetarium, as part of the series of "expensive" programs like Piner's Expensive Typewriter—and was quickly incorporated into the game in March by Russell, who served as the collator of the primary version of the game.
The initial version of the game also did not include the central star gravity well or the hyperspace feature; they were written by MIT graduate student and TMRC member Dan Edwards and Graetz respectively to add elements of a strategy to what initially was a shooter game of pure reflexes. Russell had previously wanted to add gravity, but was unable to get the program to perform the calculations fast enough; Edwards optimized the drawing functions to free up processing time to calculate the effects of gravity. The initial version of the hyperspace function was limited to three jumps, but carried no risk save possibly re-entering the game in a dangerous position; later versions removed the limit but added the increasing risk of destroying the ship instead of moving it. Additionally, in March 1962, Saunders created gamepads for the game, to counter "Space War Elbow" from sitting hunched over the mainframe toggles. The game was a multiplayer-only game because the computer had no resources left over to handle controlling the other ship. Similarly, other proposed additions to the game such as a more refined explosion display upon the destruction of a spaceship and having the torpedoes also be affected by gravity had to be abandoned as there were not enough computer resources to handle them while smoothly running the game. One feature, having the speed and direction of torpedoes differ slightly with each shot, was added and then removed by Russell after player complaints. With the added features and changes in place, Russell and the other programmers shifted focus from developing the game to preparing to show it off to others such as at the MIT Science Open House at the end of April 1962. The group added a time limit, the hyperspace function, and a larger, second screen for viewers at the demonstration, and in May Graetz presented a paper about the game, "SPACEWAR! Real-Time Capability of the PDP-1", at the first meeting of the Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society. The demonstration was a success, and the game proved very popular at MIT; the laboratory that hosted the PDP-1 soon banned play except during lunch and after working hours. Visitors such as Frederik Pohl, the editor of Galaxy Science Fiction, enjoyed playing the "lovely game" and wrote that MIT was "borrowing from the science-fiction magazines", with players able to pretend to be Skylark characters.
Beginning in mid-1962 and continuing over the next few years, members of the PDP-1 programming community at MIT, including Russell and the other Hingham Institute members, began to spread out to other schools and employers such as Stanford University and DEC, and as they did they spread the game to other universities and institutions with a PDP-1 computer. As a result, Spacewar! was perhaps the first video game to be available outside a single research institute. Over the next decade, programmers at these other institutions began coding their own variants, including features such as allowing more ships and players at once, replacing the hyperspace feature with a cloaking device, space mines, and even a first-person perspective version played on two screens that simulates each pilot's view out of the cockpit. Some of these Spacewar! installations also replicated Saunders' gamepad. DEC learned about the game soon after its creation, and gave demonstrations of it running on their PDP-1, as well as publishing a brochure about the game and the computer in 1963. According to a second-hand account heard by Russell while working at DEC, Spacewar! was reportedly used as a smoke test by DEC technicians on new PDP-1 systems before shipping because it was the only available program that exercised every aspect of the hardware. Although the game was widespread for the era, it was still very limited in its direct reach: while less expensive than most mainframe computers, the PDP-1 was priced at and only 53 were ever sold, most without a monitor and many of the remainder to secure military locations or research labs with no free computer time, which prevented the original Spacewar! from reaching beyond a narrow, academic audience. Though some later DEC models, such as the PDP-6, came with Spacewar! pre-loaded, the audience for the game remained very limited; the PDP-6, for example, sold only 23 units.
## Distribution and legacy
Spacewar! was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and was widely recreated on other minicomputer and mainframe computers of the time before migrating to early microcomputer systems in the 1970s. Just as it was during development, the game was public domain and the code was available to anyone with access to it or who contacted Russell; no attempt was made to sell it commercially, as the programming community was too small to support any commercial industry. It spread initially both by people bringing copies of the code to other installations as well as by programmers recreating the game with their own code. Early installations included the PDP-1 at Bolt, Beranek, & Newman, which also recreated the gamepads; an installation by Russell on a PDP-1 at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of Stanford University in 1963; and the University of Minnesota, where MIT graduate Albert Kuhfield in 1967–68 recreated the game for the CDC 3100, and submitted a description to Analog Science Fiction and Fact, published in 1971. The Stanford installation was so popular that in 1966 the researchers created a special "Spacewar mode" for time-sharing computer resources on their PDP-6 so that games could be played on it while research programs were also being run. Early computer scientist Alan Kay noted in 1972 that "the game of Spacewar! blossoms spontaneously wherever there is a graphics display connected to a computer", and Graetz recalled in 1981 that as the game initially spread it could be found on "just about any research computer that had a programmable CRT".
The majority of this spread took place several years after the initial development of the game; while there are early anecdotes of players and game variants at a handful of locations, primarily near MIT and Stanford, it was only after 1967 that computers hooked up to monitors or terminals capable of playing Spacewar! began to proliferate, allowing the game to reach a wider audience and influence later video game designers—by 1971, it is estimated that there were over 1000 computers with monitors, rather than a few dozen. It is around this time that the majority of the game variants were created for various computer systems, such as later PDP systems, and in 1972 the game was well known enough in the programming community that Rolling Stone sponsored the "Intergalactic Spacewar! Olympics". The event was held on October 19, 1972, at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory using a variant of Spacewar! on a combined PDP-6/PDP-10 that supported five players, and was the first ever video game tournament, with an account published in the December 7, 1972 issue of Rolling Stone.
In the early 1970s, Spacewar! migrated from large computer systems to a commercial setting as it formed the basis for the first two coin-operated video games. While playing Spacewar! at Stanford sometime between 1966 and 1969, college student Hugh Tuck remarked that a coin-operated version of the game would be very successful. While the high price of a minicomputer prevented such a game from being feasible then, in 1971 Tuck and Bill Pitts created a prototype coin-operated computer game, Galaxy Game, with a PDP-11, though they never produced more than two prototypes exhibited at Stanford. Around the same time, a second prototype coin-operated game based on Spacewar!, Computer Space, was developed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, which would become the first commercially sold arcade video game and the first widely available video game of any kind. Though Tuck felt that Computer Space was a poor imitation of Spacewar! and his Galaxy Game a superior adaptation, many players believed both arcade games to be upgraded variants of Spacewar!.
Byte magazine published an assembly language version of Spacewar! in 1977 that ran on the Altair 8800 and other Intel 8080-based microcomputers using an oscilloscope as the graphical display and a lookup table to approximate the calculations for orbits, as well as a three-dimensional variant in 1979 written in Tiny BASIC. More modern recreations of the game for computers have been made as well. An emulated version of the original game, made publicly available by Martin Graetz and running in a JavaScript PDP-1 emulator, was made available to play on the internet in 2012. The Analogue Pocket handheld console added support for running Spacewar! on an emulated PDP-1 in 2022. The only working PDP-1s that are known to exist are kept in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, where demonstrations of the machine are held, which include playing Spacewar!.
In addition to Galaxy Game and Computer Space, Spacewar! had long-lasting effects, inspiring numerous other games. These include Orbitwar (1974, PLATO network computers), Space Wars (1977, arcade), and Space War (1978, Atari 2600). Additionally, in the arcade game Asteroids (1979), designer Ed Logg used elements from Spacewar!, namely the hyperspace button and the shape of the player's ship. Products as late as the 1990 computer game Star Control drew direct inspiration from Spacewar!. Russell has been quoted as saying that the aspect of the game that he was most pleased with was the number of other programmers it inspired to write their own games without feeling restricted to using Russell's own code or design.
On March 12, 2007, The New York Times reported that Spacewar! was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time, the so-called game canon, which were proposed to be archived in the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress took up this video game preservation proposal and began with the games from this list. In 2018, it was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame by The Strong and the International Center for the History of Electronic Games. Also in 2018, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awarded the Pioneer Award, given "for individuals whose career spanning work has helped shape and define the interactive entertainment industry", to the surviving contributors to Spacewar!: Dan Edwards, Martin Graetz, Steven Piner, Steve Russell, Peter Samson, Robert Sanders, and Wayne Wiitanen.
|
39,227,845 |
Military service of Ian Smith
| 1,136,874,446 |
1941–1945 military career of the future Rhodesian Prime Minister
|
[
"Ian Smith",
"Military careers by individual",
"Military history of Southern Rhodesia during World War II",
"Royal Air Force pilots of World War II",
"Southern Rhodesian military personnel of World War II"
] |
The future Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War, interrupting his studies at Rhodes University in South Africa to join up in 1941. Following a year's pilot instruction in Southern Rhodesia under the Empire Air Training Scheme, he was posted to No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron, then stationed in the Middle East, in late 1942. Smith received six weeks' operational training in the Levant, then entered active service as a pilot officer in Iran and Iraq. No. 237 Squadron, which had operated in the Western Desert from 1941 to early 1942, returned to that front in March 1943. Smith flew in the Western Desert until October that year, when a crash during a night takeoff resulted in serious injuries, including facial disfigurements and a broken jaw. Following reconstructive plastic surgery to his face, other operations and five months' convalescence, Smith rejoined No. 237 Squadron in Corsica in May 1944. While there, he attained his highest rank, flight lieutenant.
In late June 1944, during a strafing attack on a railway yard in the Po Valley in northern Italy, Smith was shot down by anti-aircraft fire. Parachuting from his aircraft, he landed without serious injury in the Ligurian Alps, in an area that was behind German lines, but largely under the control of anti-German Italian partisans. Smith spent three months working with the local resistance movement before trekking westwards, across the Maritime Alps, with three other Allied personnel, hoping to join up with the Allied forces that had just invaded southern France. After 23 days' hiking, he and his companions were recovered by American troops and repatriated.
Smith was briefly stationed in Britain before he was posted to No. 130 (Punjab) Squadron in western Germany in April 1945. He flew combat missions there until Germany surrendered in May. He remained with No. 130 Squadron for the rest of his service, and returned home at the end of 1945. After completing his studies at Rhodes, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly for his birthplace, Selukwe, in 1948. He became Prime Minister in 1964, during his country's dispute with Britain regarding the terms for independence; Smith was influenced as a politician by his wartime experiences, and Rhodesia's military record on behalf of Britain became central to his sense of betrayal by post-war British governments. This partly motivated his administration's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. His status as a Second World War RAF veteran helped him win support, both domestically and internationally.
## Background
Ian Smith was born in 1919, the son of British settlers in Selukwe, Southern Rhodesia. He attended Chaplin School in Gwelo, where he was head prefect, recipient of the Victor Ludorum in athletics, captain of the school teams in cricket, rugby union and tennis, and successful academically. After graduating in 1937, he attended Rhodes University College in Grahamstown, South Africa, which was often attended by Rhodesian students, partly because Rhodesia then had no university of its own. Enrolling at the start of 1938, Smith read for a Bachelor of Commerce degree. He was about halfway through his course when the Second World War broke out in September 1939.
## Enlisting and training in Rhodesia
Smith was fascinated by the idea of being a fighter pilot, and particularly excited by the prospect of flying a Spitfire. He wanted to leave Rhodes immediately to join the Southern Rhodesian Air Force, but did not because military recruiters in the colony had been told not to accept university students until after they graduated. As in the First World War, white Rhodesians in general were very keen to enlist; because it was feared that the absence of these men might adversely affect the strategically important mines, manpower controls were introduced to keep certain whites out of the military and in their civilian occupations. One of Southern Rhodesia's main contributions to the Allied war effort proved to be its participation, from 1940, in the Empire Air Training Scheme. The Southern Rhodesian Air Force was absorbed into the British Royal Air Force (RAF) in April 1940, becoming No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron RAF. Two more RAF squadrons, No. 44 and No. 266, were subsequently also designated "Rhodesian" formations.
Remaining at Rhodes during the 1940 academic year, Smith secretly made plans to leave for military service in spite of his instructions to finish studying. In June 1940, during the mid-year break from studies, he quietly travelled to the Southern Rhodesian capital, Salisbury, to tell the colony's director of manpower, William Addison, that he wanted to join the air force; to avoid being barred from enlistment, Smith did not mention his university attendance, and gave his Selukwe address. During his Christmas vacation at the end of 1940, Smith went to Salisbury again, and was successful in a second interview with an air force official and a physical examination. Early in 1941, having received his pilot course call-up papers, Smith underwent a final interview, during which it emerged that he was a university student; the interviewer briefly demurred, but accepted Smith when he insisted that he wanted to sign up.
In September 1941 Smith formally enlisted in the Royal Air Force and received service number 80463. He began his instruction with Initial Training Wing in Bulawayo, and after six weeks transferred to Elementary Flying Training School at Guinea Fowl, just outside Gwelo. The majority of the men he trained alongside were Australians, and many others were British. Smith was glad to find himself in a course that would ultimately lead to flying fighters as opposed to bombers, since at Guinea Fowl he learned to pilot Tiger Moths, then Harvards. He was also pleased to have been posted only a half-hour car journey from Selukwe. Late in the course he was picked out to undergo instruction as an officer cadet, which meant he was transferred to Thornhill, another Gwelo airbase. He passed out in September 1942 with the rank of pilot officer; his training in Southern Rhodesia had taken a year in all.
## Service
### Middle East and North Africa
Smith hoped to be posted to Britain at the end of his training, and was initially told that this was going to happen, but he was instead sent to the Middle East. He was despatched to Idku, a small RAF base near Cairo, in late 1942, from where he was posted to an operational training unit based at Baalbek in Lebanon. He spent six weeks there, flying over much of the Levant in a Hawker Hurricane fighter, before being posted to No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron to begin active service, again piloting Hurricanes. The squadron was stationed near the Iranian capital of Tehran when Smith joined it, but it almost immediately transferred to Kirkuk in Iraq, to help guard the oil wells and pipelines there. In March 1943, it was again committed to the Western Desert campaign in North Africa, having previously served there during 1941–1942, and Smith served on this front as a Hurricane pilot. He was promoted to flying officer on 25 March 1943.
On 4 October 1943, Smith took off from Idku at dawn in a Hurricane Mk IIC to escort a shipping convoy. Light was extremely poor, and Smith's throttle malfunctioned; he failed to take off quickly enough to clear a blast wall at the end of the runway. The undercarriage of the aircraft scraped against some sandbags on the wall, causing Smith to lose control of the plane and crash. The shoulder straps on his harness, built to withstand stress of up to 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb), snapped, and his face was smashed against the Hurricane's gyrosight. Smith suffered serious facial injuries, and broke his jaw, a leg and a shoulder. Doctors thought at first that his back had also been broken, but it had only been buckled.
A team of doctors and surgeons at the Fifteenth Scottish Hospital in Cairo worked extensively on Smith, putting his jaw back together with a complicated assembly of bandage, plaster, nuts, bolts and wire, and rebuilt his face through skin grafts and other reconstructive surgery. In March 1944, after about five months' convalescence, he was passed fit for flying. He turned down the offer of a posting home to Southern Rhodesia as an instructor and, after a refresher course in Egypt, travelled to Corsica to rejoin No. 237 Squadron, which was by now flying Spitfire Mk IXs.
### Italy
Smith joined No. 237 Squadron in Corsica on 10 May 1944, and resumed operational flying two days later. He was promoted in the field to flight lieutenant. The unit was attached to an American bomber group, and assigned to cover it during attacks on northern Italian cities. The fighters also embarked on strafing raids in the Po Valley against railway traffic and heavy vehicles. Smith flew 10 sorties and on the last of these, on 22 June, led a strafing raid against a large railway yard when his aircraft was hit by flak on a second pass. He warned other pilots not to attempt a second pass on the railway yard, and turned towards the coast, hoping to ditch in the sea. Smith's wingman, Alan Douglas, told him by radio that black smoke was coming from the aircraft, then that the engine was ablaze. Smith bailed out. He had never parachuted before. He turned his Spitfire upside down, thrust the stick forward, released the cockpit's canopy, fell out of the plane and landed without serious injuries on the side of a mountain.
According to his own account, he initially hid in a large bush, but decided this was too obvious, and so moved to a smaller one. A German patrol arrived, examined the original bush, and attacked it with bursts of automatic gunfire before leaving. "Somebody was keeping an eye on me when I thought I'd better get out of that bush ..." he later told Phillippa Berlyn. The area in which he had landed was predominantly anti-German, and largely under the control of pro-Allied Italian partisans; one of these saw Smith's descent and retrieved his parachute to stop the Germans from finding it. Smith hid for a while longer before emerging to greet a boy of about 12. The boy, Leo, knew no English; using sign language, he told Smith to sit and wait, and shortly returned with his elder brother, Lorenzo. Lorenzo proposed that Smith come to their home to eat, and Smith accepted. The boys' parents, peasant farmers named Zunino, took him in, but decided it was too risky to keep him at the house so soon after the crash, and hid him in a cave on the mountain. The next day, the Germans came to the Zuninos' house, looking for Smith. After about a week, the danger had subsided, and the Zuninos gave Smith a room in the house.
Smith worked on the Zuninos' farm and began studying the Italian language, which he realised he had to learn if he was to travel through enemy territory to the Allied lines. After a month, the local partisan commander, Antonio Bozzano (nicknamed "Barbetta" because of his beard), came to meet Smith, and asked him to join his ranks. Smith accompanied Barbetta to his headquarters, about 10 miles (16 km) away in a village called Piancastagna. When Barbetta asked his rank, Smith said he was a captain. "Oh well," Barbetta replied, tapping him on the shoulder; "you are now a major. I make you a major." Smith realised that Barbetta had given him this "promotion" in the hope of elevating his own reputation in the resistance movement—"none of the other regiments in the area could boast an Inglesi pilote and a majore to boot", he explained in his memoirs. Smith got on well with Barbetta, and took part in sabotage operations for about three months during late 1944. Meanwhile, he became proficient in Italian. After the Germans pulled out of their local garrison at Sassello in October 1944, Smith told Barbetta that he was going to attempt to return to the Allied lines. The partisans tried to talk him out of it, telling him it was too risky, but when Smith insisted, they gave him letters to take with him, endorsing him to other Italian partisan groups he might encounter on his way. A British Army corporal known to Smith as "Bill", who had been hiding in a nearby village, asked if he could come as well, and Smith agreed.
Smith headed west, across the Ligurian Alps, towards southern France, which he knew had just been invaded by Allied troops, principally Americans, Free French and British. He and Bill were assisted along the way by Italian partisan groups and other locals. After 10 days on the road, three other Allied personnel—a Frenchman, an Austrian and a Pole—joined the trek, having met Smith and Bill at a partisan camp. The lingua franca of the group having changed to Italian, the five men hiked to the border, where they were taken in by an old farmer, Jean Batiste Chambrin, who gave them instructions on how to pass the German sentries guarding the border with France. The soldiers decided that because it would be too risky to try to cross all together, Smith and Bill would go first, with the Frenchman, Austrian and Pole following the next day.
Chambrin did not speak English, but summoned his English-speaking brother. Smith produced his RAF rank insignia as proof of his identity. Smith and Bill made their way to the border crossing, guided by Chambrin, who told them that his brother would meet them on the other side of the border. The only crossing was a bridge, manned by German sentries. Smith observed the checkpoint for a while, and saw that pedestrians crossing alone or in pairs were rarely challenged, while larger groups often were. He thought it might be possible simply to walk across, and told Bill to "just look straight ahead and walk quietly on". They were not challenged, and met Chambrin's brother a few miles away. The Austrian and Frenchman joined them the next day; the Polish soldier, who had appeared to Smith to be underage, had lost his nerve on seeing the Germans and had gone back.
Having crossed into France, they sought friendly troops. They decided to bypass the German positions by crossing the Maritime Alps, with a local guide, over the course of two days. They lacked equipment and clothing for mountaineering. During the night, Smith took off his shoes, and found in the morning that they had frozen and that he could not put them on. He continued in his socks, which wore through, forcing him to finish the journey walking barefoot on the ice and snow. Twenty-three days after Smith and Bill set off from Piancastagna, they met American troops who took them to a local base camp, from where they were returned to their respective forces. The Americans took Smith to Marseille, from where he was flown to the RAF transit camp at Naples. On arriving in late November 1944, Smith sent a brief telegram home to Selukwe: "Alive and well. Love to you all—Ian."
### Late war and demobilisation
It was well known to British servicemen that spending three months or more missing behind enemy lines resulted in an automatic posting back home, which Smith did not want; he was therefore wary as he entered his interview at the Naples transit base. When passage back to Rhodesia via Egypt was offered, Smith successfully requested permission to go to Britain instead, saying that he had many relatives there and considered it a second home. In England he was posted to a six-week refresher course in Shropshire, flying Spitfires. Smith performed very strongly in the exercises and, at his own request, was posted back to active service after only three weeks in the course. He was attached to No. 130 (Punjab) Squadron, part of No. 125 Wing, which was commanded by Group Captain (later Air Vice Marshal) Johnnie Johnson, one of the most successful RAF flying aces of the war. Reporting for duty with No. 130 Squadron at Celle, in western Germany, on 23 April 1945, he flew combat missions there, "[having] a little bit of fun shooting up odd things", he recalled, until the European war ended on 7 May with Germany's surrender.
Smith remained with No. 130 Squadron for the rest of his service, flying with it to Copenhagen, and then, via Britain, to Norway. He spent around five months in Norway as part of the post-war occupation forces, but did not learn Norwegian, later telling Berlyn that it seemed much harder to him than Italian, "and they all spoke English, you see". After No. 130 Squadron returned to Britain in November 1945, Smith was demobilised and sent home. He was met at RAF Kumalo in Bulawayo by his family, with whom he drove back to Selukwe. Journalist R. W. Johnson wrote that Smith's war service was "undoubtedly the central experience of his life".
## War wounds
The plastic surgery used to reconstruct Smith's face following his crash in the Western Desert in 1943 left his face somewhat lopsided, with partial paralysis. In her 1978 biography of Smith, Berlyn writes that the grafted skin on his face "almost hides the injuries even today, though it has left him with a slightly blank expression". This was often commented on by observers, and when Smith died in 2007, it was prominent in many of his obituaries. "It was Ian Smith's war-damaged left eye that drew people's attention first," began the report printed in the London Times: "wide open, heavy-lidded and impassive from experimental plastic surgery, it hinted at a dull, characterless nature. The other was narrow, slanting and slightly hooded. Being watched by it was an uncomfortable experience. Each eye could have belonged to a different person." The Daily Telegraph took a similar line, reporting that the operation to reconstruct Smith's face had "left him with a somewhat menacing stare".
Smith's injuries also made him permanently unable to sit for long periods without pain, so when he attended conferences as a politician, he would briefly rise from his seat from time to time. During his talks with British Prime Minister Harold Wilson aboard HMS Tiger in 1966, Smith regularly got up and looked out of a porthole; the British incorrectly interpreted this as Smith feeling intimidated by Wilson, or seasick.
## Influence on political career
Smith completed his studies at Rhodes during 1946, and entered politics in 1948 when he successfully contested the Selukwe seat on behalf of the Liberal Party, becoming his home town's representative in the Legislative Assembly at the age of 29. He rose through the political ranks with the United Federal Party during the 1950s, and in 1962 helped to form the Rhodesian Front, a right-wing party whose avowed goal was full independence from Britain without an immediate transfer to black majority rule. He became Deputy Prime Minister in December that year when the new party, led by Winston Field, surprised most observers by winning that month's election. After the Cabinet forced Field to resign in April 1964, following his failure to gain independence from Britain, they chose Smith as the new Prime Minister.
Smith, Southern Rhodesia's first native-born head of government, was strongly influenced as premier by his wartime experiences. Smith's memories of his service for Britain with the Royal Air Force caused him to feel betrayed when the British government proved one of his main adversaries as Prime Minister. After talks repeatedly broke down, Smith's government unilaterally declared independence on 11 November 1965. In 1970, following the results of a referendum, he declared Rhodesia a republic. He argued that Britain was to blame for the situation, saying, "Rhodesia did not want to seize independence from Britain. It was forced upon us."
Smith's own military service and reputation for bravery gave rise to positive sentiments regarding him personally while premier. White Rhodesians widely hailed him a war hero, as did many overseas commentators. Most reports in the British press about Smith referenced his war wounds or otherwise alluded to his past military service. In 1966, Smith's supporters in Britain sent him a painting depicting two Spitfires taking off for a dawn raid, "on behalf of many British people who remained true despite the misguidance of government". Smith retained his affection for the Spitfire; in his memoirs he described it as "the most beautiful aircraft ever made." He also retained some proficiency in the Italian language, though according to one Italian visitor his accent was "atrocious".
Smith's years as an RAF pilot were often alluded to in political rhetoric and popular culture. In the phrase of Martin Francis, "no white Rhodesian kitchen in the 1960s and 1970s was complete without an illustrated dishcloth featuring 'Good Old Smithy' and his trusty Spitfire". With regards to coverage of the Rhodesian Bush War historian Luise White wrote, "Smith's war service was invariably mentioned by foreign journalists but was of no real interest to national servicemen." The Rhodesian Front's election strategy of emphasising Smith's reputation as a war hero was criticised by the journalist Peter Niesewand, who was deported from Rhodesia in 1973; according to Niesewand, Smith's contribution to the Allied war effort had been "to crash two perfectly good Hurricane planes for the loss of no Germans". Smith won decisive election victories in 1970, 1974 and 1977, and remained in office until the country was reconstituted under majority rule as Zimbabwe Rhodesia in 1979. He continued to wear his RAF Spitfire pilot's tie well into old age, including on the final day before Zimbabwe Rhodesia's formal establishment on 1 June 1979—"a final gesture of defiance", Bill Schwarz writes, "symbolising an entire lost world."
|
18,703,984 |
History of a Six Weeks' Tour
| 1,137,624,351 |
1817 book by Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley
|
[
"1817 non-fiction books",
"Literary collaborations",
"Travel books",
"Works by Mary Shelley",
"Works by Percy Bysshe Shelley"
] |
History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland; with Letters Descriptive of a Sail Round the Lake of Geneva and of the Glaciers of Chamouni is a travel narrative by the English Romantic authors Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Published anonymously in 1817, it describes two trips taken by Mary, Percy, and Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont: one across Europe in 1814, and one to Lake Geneva in 1816. Divided into three sections, the text consists of a journal, four letters, and Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc". Apart from the poem, preface, and two letters, the text was primarily written and organised by Mary Shelley. In 1840 she revised the journal and the letters, republishing them in a collection of Percy Shelley's writings.
Part of the new genre of the Romantic travel narrative, History of a Six Weeks' Tour exudes spontaneity and enthusiasm; the authors demonstrate their desire to develop a sense of taste and distinguish themselves from those around them. The romantic elements of the work would have hinted at the text's radical politics to nineteenth-century readers. However, the text's frank discussion of politics, including positive references to the French Revolution and praise of Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, was unusual for a travel narrative at the time, particularly one authored primarily by a woman.
Although it sold poorly, History of a Six Weeks' Tour received favourable reviews. In proposing another travel narrative to her publisher in 1843, Mary Shelley claimed "my 6 weeks tour brought me many compliments".
## Biographical background
Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley met and fell in love in 1814. Percy Shelley initially visited the Godwin household because he was interested in meeting his philosophical hero, Mary's father, William Godwin. However, Mary and Percy soon began having secret rendezvous, despite the fact that Percy was already married. To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved of their extramarital affair and tried to thwart the relationship. On 28 July 1814, Mary and Percy secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with them.
The trio travelled for six weeks, from 28 July to 13 September 1814, through France, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands (which is referred to as "Holland"); however, they were forced to return to England due to financial considerations. The situation upon their return was fraught with complications: Mary had become pregnant with a child who would soon die, she and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her.
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their second child travelled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They spent the summer months with the Romantic poet Lord Byron, but, as Mary Shelley later wrote of the year without a summer, "[i]t proved a wet, ungenial summer and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". The group spent their time writing, boating on Lake Geneva, and talking late into the night. Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company also amused themselves by reading German ghost stories, prompting Byron to suggest they each write their own supernatural tale. Mary Godwin began writing what she assumed would be a short story, but with Percy Shelley's encouragement and collaboration, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus.
Mary, Percy, and Claire returned to England in September and on 30 December 1816 Percy and Mary married (two weeks after the death of Percy's first wife), healing the family rift. In March 1817, the Shelleys and Claire moved to Marlow, Buckinghamshire. At Marlow, they entertained friends, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein, which was published anonymously in January 1818. She also began work on History of a Six Weeks' Tour, which was published in November 1817.
## Composition and publication
In the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley started to assemble the couple's joint diary from their 1814 journey into a travel book. At what point she decided to include the letters from the 1816 Geneva trip and Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc" is unclear, but by 28 September the journal and the letters were a single text. By the middle of October she was making fair copies for the press and correcting and transcribing Frankenstein for publication while Percy was working on The Revolt of Islam. Percy probably corrected and copyedited the journal section while Mary did the same for his letters. Advertisements for the work appeared on 30 October in the Morning Chronicle and on 1 November in The Times, promising a 6 November release. However, the work was not actually published until 12 and 13 November. It was Mary Shelley's first published work.
History of a Six Weeks' Tour begins with a "Preface", written by Percy Shelley, followed by the journal section. The journal consists of edited entries from the joint diary that Percy and Mary Shelley kept during their 1814 trip to the Continent, specifically those from 28 July to 13 September 1814. Of the 8,500 words in the journal section, 1,150 are from Percy's entries and either copied verbatim or only slightly paraphrased. Almost all of the passages describing the sublime are in Percy's words. When Mary turned to her own entries, however, she significantly revised them; according to Jeanne Moskal, the editor of the recent definitive edition of the Tour, "almost nothing of her original phrasing remains". She even included sections of Claire Clairmont's journal.
The second section of the text consists of four "Letters written during a Residence of Three Months in the Environs of Geneva, in the Summer of the Year 1816". The first two letters are signed "M" and the second two "S". The first two are attributed to Mary Shelley, but their origin is obscure. As Moskal writes, "the obvious inference is that they are literary versions of lost private epistles to Fanny Godwin", Mary Shelley's stepsister who remained in England and with whom she corresponded during the journey. However, Moskal also notes that there is a missing Mary Shelley notebook from precisely this time, from which the material in these letters could have come: "It is extremely likely that this notebook contained the same kind of mix of entries made by both Shelleys that the surviving first (July 1814 – May 1815) and second (July 1816 – June 1819) journal notebooks exhibit....Furthermore, Letter I contains four short passages found almost verbatim in P. B. Shelley's letter of 15 May to T. L. Peacock." The third and fourth letters are composites of Mary's journal entry for 21 July and one of Percy's letters to Peacock.
The third section of the text consists only of Percy's poem "Mont Blanc. Lines written in the vale of Chamouni"; it was the first and only publication of the poem in his lifetime. It has been argued by leading Percy Shelley scholar Donald Reiman that the History of a Six Weeks' Tour is arranged so as to lead up to "Mont Blanc". However, those who see the work as primarily a picturesque travel narrative argue that the descriptions of Alpine scenes would have been familiar to early nineteenth-century audiences and they would not have expected a poetic climax.
In 1839, History of a Six Weeks' Tour was revised and republished as "Journal of a Six Weeks’ Tour" and "Letters from Geneva" in Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edited by Mrs. Shelley (1840). Although these works were not by her husband, she decided to include them because they were "part of his life", as she explained to her friend Leigh Hunt. She appended her initials to the works to indicate her authorship. As Moskal explains, "the unity of the 1817 volume as a volume was dissolved" to make way for a biography of Percy Shelley. After Percy Shelley drowned in 1822, his father forbade Mary Shelley from writing a memoir or biography of the poet. She therefore added significant biographical notices to the edited collections of his works. The 1840 version of History of a Six Weeks' Tour has four major types of changes according to Moskal: "(i) modernization and correction of spelling, punctuation and French (ii) self-distancing from the familial relationship with Claire Clairmont (iii) a heightened sensitivity to national identity (iv) presentation of the travelers as a writing, as well as reading, circle". As a result of these changes, more of Percy Shelley’s writing was included in the 1840 version than in the 1817 version. In 1845, Mary Shelley published a one-volume edition with additional minor changes, based on the 1840 version.
## Description
History of a Six Weeks' Tour consists of three major sections: a journal, letters from Geneva, and the poem "Mont Blanc". It begins with a short preface, which claims "nothing can be more unpresuming than this little volume" and makes it clear that the couple in the narrative is married (although Mary and Percy were not at the time).
The journal, which switches between the first-person singular and plural but never identifies its narrators, describes Percy, Mary, and Claire's 1814 six-week tour across the Continent. It is divided by country: France, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. After the group arrives in Calais and proceeds to Paris, they decide on a plan: "After talking over and rejecting many plans, we fixed on one eccentric enough, but which, from its romance, was very pleasing to us. In England we could not have put it in execution without sustaining continual insult and impertinence: the French are far more tolerant of the vagaries of their neighbours. We resolved to walk through France". Each day they enter a new town; but even while travelling, they spend time writing and reading. The journal comments on the people they meet, the countryside, and the current events that have shaped the environment. Some of what they see is beautiful and some is "barren and wretched". Percy sprains his ankle, which becomes an increasing problem—the group is forced to hire a carriage. By the time the trio reaches Lucerne, they are nearly out of money and decide to return home. They return by boat along the Rhine, the cheapest mode of travel. Despite problems with unreliable boats and dangerous waters, they see some beautiful scenery before landing in England.
The four "Letters from Geneva" cover the period between May and July 1816, which the Shelleys spent at Lake Geneva and switch between the singular and plural first-person. Letters I, II, and IV describe the sublime aspects of Mont Blanc, the Alps, Lake Geneva, and the glaciers around Chamonix:
> Mont Blanc was before us, but it was covered with cloud; its base, furrowed with dreadful gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow intolerably bright, part of the chain connected with Mont Blanc, shone through the clouds at intervals on high. I never knew—I never imagined what mountains were before. The immensity of these serial summits excited, when they suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of extatic [sic] wonder, not unallied to madness.
Letter III describes a tour around the environs of Vevey and other places associated with the Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau: "This journey has been on every account delightful, but most especially, because then I first knew the divine beauty of Rousseau's imagination, as it exhibits itself in Julie."
"Mont Blanc" compares the sublime aspect of the mountain to the human imagination:
> > The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom... Thus thou, ravine of Arve—dark, deep ravine— Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale...
While emphasising the ability of the human imagination to uncover truth through a study of nature, the poem also questions religious certainty. However, according to the poem only a privileged few are able to see nature as it truly is and reveal its secrets to the world.
## Genre
History of a Six Weeks’ Tour is a travel narrative, part of a literary tradition begun in the seventeenth century. Through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, Continental travel was considered educational: young, aristocratic gentlemen completed their studies by learning European languages abroad and visiting foreign courts. In the early seventeenth century, however, the emphasis shifted from classical learning to empirical experience, such as knowledge of topography, history, and culture. Detailed travel books, including personal travel narratives, began to be published and became popular in the eighteenth century: over 1,000 individual travel narratives and travel miscellanies were published between 1660 and 1800. The empiricism that was driving the scientific revolution spread to travel literature; for example, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu included information she learned in Turkey regarding smallpox inoculation in her travel letters. By 1742, critic and essayist Samuel Johnson was recommending that travellers engage in "a moral and ethical study of men and manners" in addition to a scientific study of topography and geography.
Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Grand Tour became increasingly popular; travel to the Continent for Britain's elite was not only educational but also nationalistic. All aristocratic gentlemen took similar trips and visited similar sites, often devoted to developing an appreciation of Britain from abroad. The Grand Tour was celebrated as educational travel when it involved exchanging scientific information with the intellectual elite, learning about other cultures, and preparing oneself to lead. However, it was condemned as trivial when the tourist simply purchased curio collectibles, acquired a "superficial social polish", and pursued fleeting sexual relationships. During the Napoleonic Wars, the Continent was closed to British travellers and the Grand Tour came under increasing criticism, particularly from radicals such as William Godwin who scorned its aristocratic connections. Young Romantic writers criticised its lack of spontaneity; they celebrated Madame de Staёl's novel Corinne (1807), which depicts proper travel as "immediate, sensitive, and above all [an] enthusiastic experience".
A new form of travel emerged—Romantic travel—which focused on developing "taste", rather than acquiring objects, and having "enthusiastic experiences". History of a Six Weeks' Tour embodies this new style of travel. It is a specifically Romantic travel narrative because of its enthusiasm and the writers' desire to develop a sense of "taste". The travellers are open to new experiences, changing their itinerary frequently and using whatever vehicles they can find. For example, at one point in the journal, Mary Shelley muses:
> The money we had brought with us from Paris was nearly exhausted, but we obtained about £38. in silver upon discount from one of the bankers in the city, and with this we resolved to journey towards the lake of Uri, and seek in that romantic and interesting country some cottage where we might dwell in peace and solitude. Such were our dreams, which we should probably have realized, had it not been for the deficiency of that indispensable article money, which obliged us to return to England.
Not everything she encounters is beautiful, however, and she juxtaposes her distaste for the German working class with her delight with French servants. Although politically liberal, Mary Shelley is aesthetically repelled by the Germans and therefore excludes them. Unlike the non-discriminating Claire Clairmont, Shelley feels free to make judgments of the scenes around her; Shelley writes that Claire "on looking at this scene...exclaimed, 'Oh! this is beautiful enough; let us live here.' This was her exclamation on every new scene, and as each surpassed the one before, she cried, 'I am glad we did not stay at Charenton, but let us live here'". Shelley also compares herself positively to the French peasants who are unaware that Napoleon has been deposed. As scholar Angela Jones contends, "Shelley may be said to figure herself as a more knowledgeable, disinterested English outsider capable of rendering impartial judgment"—an Enlightenment value.
However, as Romanticist Jacqueline Labbe argues, Mary Shelley challenges the conventions of the Romantic travel narrative as well. For example, one reviewer wrote, "now and then a French phrase drops sweetly enough from [the author's] fair mouth", and as Labbe explains, these phrases are supposed to lead the reader to imagine a "beautiful heroine and her group passing easily from village to village". However, both French quotations in History of a Six Weeks' Tour undercut this Romantic image. The first describes the overturning of a boat and the drowning of its occupants; the second is a warning not to travel on foot through France, as Napoleon's army has just been disbanded and the women are in danger of rape.
While the overarching generic category for History of a Six Weeks' Tour is that of the travel narrative, its individual sections can be considered separately. The first journey is told as a "continuous, undated diary entry" while the second journey is told through epistolary and lyric forms. Moskal agrees with Reiman that the book was constructed to culminate in "Mont Blanc" and she notes that this was accomplished using a traditional hierarchy of genres—diary, letters, poem—a hierarchy that is gendered as Mary Shelley's writings are superseded by Percy's. However, these traditional gender-genre associations are undercut by the implicit acknowledgment of Mary Shelley as the primary author, with her journal giving the entire work its name and contributing the bulk of the text.
The journal is also threaded through with elements of the medieval and Gothic romance tradition: "accounts of ruined castles, enchanting valleys, and sublime views". In fact, in "The English in Italy", Mary Shelley writes of the journey that "it was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance". However, these romantic descriptions are often ambiguous. Often single sentences contain juxtapositions between "romance" and "reality": "Many villages, ruined by war, occupied the most romantic spots". She also references Don Quixote, but he was "famous for his delusions of romance", as Labbe points out. Mary Shelley's allusions to Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605) not only places her text in a romance tradition, they would also have hinted at its radicalism to contemporary readers. During the 1790s, Mary Shelley's father, William Godwin, connected his support for the French Revolution with the romance tradition, specifically Don Quixote and any allusion to the novel would have signalled Godwinian radicalism to readers at the time. It would also have suggested support for reform efforts in Spain, which was rebelling against Napoleon. The beginning of the journal is dominated by romance conventions, but this style disappears when the travellers run out of money. However, romance conventions briefly return during the trip down the Rhine. As Labbe argues, "it would appear that while [Shelley] seems to be industriously salting her narrative with romance in order, perhaps, to garner public approval, she also ... exposes the falsity of such a scheme."
One of the most important influences on History of a Six Weeks' Tour was Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), written by Mary Shelley's mother Mary Wollstonecraft. A travel narrative that reflects on topography, politics, society, aesthetics, and the author's personal feelings, it provided a model for Mary Shelley's work. Like her mother, Mary Shelley revealed her liberalism by boldly discussing politics; however, this political tone was unusual for travel works at the time and was considered inappropriate for women writers. Like Wollstonecraft's Letters, History of a Six Weeks' Tour blurs the line between private and public spheres by using intimate genres such as the journal and the letter, allowing Mary Shelley to present political opinions through personal anecdote and the picturesque.
## Themes
History of a Six Weeks' Tour is part of a liberal reaction to recent history: its trajectory begins with a survey of the devastation of the Napoleonic Wars and ends by celebrating the sublime in nature. William Wordsworth's 1850 The Prelude and the third canto of Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage follow a similar course. As Moskal explains, "nature is troped as the repository of a sublimity, once incarnated in Napoleon, that will re-emerge in politics". The book is therefore not only a liberal political statement but also a Romantic celebration of nature.
The journal begins with, as Moskal describes, a "view of Napoleon's shattered political power". He had just been exiled to Elba a few months before the Shelleys arrived in Europe. Surveying the devastation caused by the Napoleonic Wars, Mary Shelley worries about how the British will handle Paris and grieves over the "ruin" brought to the small French town of Nogent by the Cossacks. Between the two journeys recorded in the text, Napoleon returned to power in the so-called Hundred Days and was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The four letters from Geneva reflect obliquely on this event. As Moskal argues, "the Shelleys focus on the forms of sublimity and power that outlast Napoleon: the literary genius of Rousseau and the natural sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc". Both Shelleys use their works in History of a Six Weeks’ Tour to assess and evaluate the French Revolution, making it a highly political travel narrative. In Letter II, Mary Shelley writes:
> Here a small obelisk is erected to the glory of Rousseau, and here (such is the mutability of human life) the magistrates, the successors of those who exiled him from his native country, were shot by the populace during that revolution, which his writing mainly contributed to mature, and which, notwithstanding the temporary bloodshed and injustice with which it was polluted, has produced enduring benefits to mankind.
Mary Shelley also includes positive portrayals of the French people. As Mary Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett explains, "politically pointed, these accolades underscore the link between the 1814 defeated enemy of Britain and the pre-Napoleon democratic spirit of the 1789 Revolution, a spirit the Shelleys wished to reactivate".
Lives of people interested Mary Shelley and she recorded them, but she also recorded a great deal of the travellers’ own feelings, suggesting to the reader the appropriate reaction. For example, she wrote of the French town Nogent:
> Nothing could be more entire than the ruin which these barbarians had spread as they advanced; perhaps they remembered Moscow and the destruction of the Russian villages; but we were now in France, and the distress of the inhabitants, whose houses had been burned, their cattle killed, and all their wealth destroyed, has given a sting to my detestation of war, which none can feel who have not travelled through a country pillaged and wasted by this plague, which, in his pride, man inflicts upon his fellow.
## Reception
History of a Six Weeks' Tour received three major reviews, mostly favourable. However, the book did not sell well. Percy Shelley discovered in April or May 1820 that there were no profits to pay the printer and when Charles Ollier, the co-publisher, went out of business in 1823, his inventory included 92 copies of the work. Still, Mary Shelley believed the work was successful, and when she proposed another travel narrative, Rambles in Germany and Italy, to publisher Edward Moxon in 1843, she wrote "my 6 weeks tour brought me many compliments". Her comments may have been self-interested, however.
The first review of History of a Six Weeks' Tour was published by The Eclectic Review in May 1818, which reviewed the book along with publisher Thomas Hookham's account of a Swiss tour, A Walk through Switzerland in September 1816. Although both works share the same fascination with Rousseau and his liberal ideas, only Hookham is attacked; as scholar Benjamin Colbert explains, "Shelley tends to remain on more neutral territory", such as the cult of sensibility and the novel Julie. However, the reviewer questions the authenticity of the work: "To us...the value of the book is considerably lessened by a strong suspicion that the dramatis personae are fictitious, and that the little adventures introduced for the purpose of giving life and interest to the narration, are the mere invention of the Author." He identifies passages that remind him of similar travel narratives by Patrick Brydone, Ann Radcliffe, and John Carr, effectively identifying the generic tradition in which the Shelleys were writing.
The second and most positive review was published by Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in July 1818. The reviewer was most impressed with the journal section, particularly its informality and concision: "the perusal of it rather produces the same effect as a smart walk before breakfast, in company with a lively friend who hates long stories". Covertly comparing the work to bluestocking Lady Morgan's recent France (1817), the reviewer found the female writer of History of a Six Weeks' Tour much more favourable: "The writer of this little volume, too, is a Lady, and writes like one, with ease, gracefulness, and vivacity. Above all, there is something truly delightful in the colour of her stockings; they are of the purest white, and much more becoming than the brightest blue." The Monthly Review published a short review in January 1819; they found the first journey "hurried" but the second one better described.
For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Mary Shelley was known as the author of Frankenstein and the wife of famous Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. It was not until the 1970s, with the rise of feminist literary criticism, that scholars began to pay attention to her other works. In fact, with the exception of Frankenstein and The Last Man, until the 1990s almost all of Mary Shelley's writings had gone out of print or only been available in expensive, scholarly editions. It was not until the publication of scholarship by Mary Poovey and Anne K. Mellor in the 1980s that Mary Shelley's "other" works—her short stories, essays, reviews, dramas, biographies, travel narratives, and other novels—began to be recognised as literary achievements.
## See also
- Mary Shelley bibliography
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68th New York Infantry Regiment
| 1,158,892,690 |
American infantry regiment
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[
"1861 establishments in New York (state)",
"German-American history",
"Military units and formations disestablished in 1865",
"Military units and formations established in 1861",
"Units and formations of the Union Army from New York (state)"
] |
The 68th New York Infantry Regiment served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Also known as the Cameron Rifles or the Second German Rifle Regiment, the men were mostly German immigrants. Organized in July 1861, three months after the outbreak of war, the 68th saw service in the Eastern and Western theaters.
As a part of the Army of the Potomac, it was initially assigned to the defenses of Washington, D.C. Later, the 68th was transferred to the Shenandoah Valley and fought at the Battle of Cross Keys. The men of the 68th were then reassigned to central Virginia and found themselves in the thick of the fighting at Second Bull Run. After returning to the nation's capital, the regiment fought in Chancellorsville and was routed by Confederate forces. At Gettysburg, they saw battle on two of the three days and took heavy losses.
The regiment was then transferred to the west and participated in the Chattanooga Campaign. The 68th fought in the battles of Wauhatchie and Missionary Ridge, assisting in the Union victories there. The regiment marched to relieve the siege of Knoxville, and then spent the last year of the war on occupation duty in Tennessee and Georgia, before being disbanded in November 1865.
## Raising the regiment
On July 22, 1861, the United States War Department authorized Robert J. Betge to raise a volunteer infantry regiment in New York. Recruited to serve for three years, the men came mostly from Manhattan (New York City), and also from New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The mostly German immigrants were also called the "Second German Rifles" (the First German Rifles, raised several months earlier, were the 8th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment), but Betge called the regiment the "Cameron Rifles", after Secretary of War Simon Cameron. The officers were also German, and many had served in the armies of Austria, Prussia, and other German states. In all, 1,020 men filled the ranks when the regiment had finished recruiting.
Accepted into service on August 19, the 68th left New York the next day, traveling by train from Perth Amboy, New Jersey, to Washington, D.C., to join the brigade of Brigadier General Louis Blenker in the Army of the Potomac. Blenker was a German immigrant himself, a refugee of the Revolutions of 1848, and many of the units under his command were heavily German-American. Encamped at Roach's Mills, Virginia, the 68th participated in the defense of Washington, losing three men in their first combat, a minor skirmish with a Confederate patrol.
In November, the Army was reorganized; the 68th was shifted to Colonel Adolph von Steinwehr's brigade and Blenker moved up to command the division. They encamped at Hunter's Chapel, Virginia, for the remainder of the winter. There, Betge was brought before a court-martial, accused of "conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman": confiscating two horses and other property from "loyal" Virginia citizens, and taking a bribe to hire the 68th's regimental sutler. He was not convicted, and was permitted to return to the regiment.
## Shenandoah Valley
In March 1862, the Army was again reorganized and Blenker's brigade was merged into the II Corps, led by Maj. Gen. Edwin Vose Sumner. That month the 68th moved to Warrenton, Virginia, where it came into contact with Confederate cavalry; three of the officers were captured. The following month, Blenker's brigade was moved into Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont's Mountain Department, necessitating a march to Winchester, Virginia, where the 68th and the rest of Frémont's army guarded the western part of the Shenandoah Valley against incursions by Confederate forces under Lt. Gen. Stonewall Jackson. Their long march had left the 68th bereft of supplies and low on rations. Colonel Betge protested against the mistreatment of his regiment, and was placed under arrest, surrendering command to Lt. Col., John H. Kleefish.
The initial action in Jackson's Valley Campaign took place to their east, but in June Frémont's force of 15,000 joined the 10,000-man division of Brig. Gen. James Shields to converge on Jackson south of Massanutten Mountain. Jackson was determined to attack the two Union columns separately and arranged half of his troops to block Shields on the right side of the mountain, while the other half, commanded by Maj. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, blocked the left side. Jackson's wish was realized when, on June 8, Frémont's army attacked. Frémont, believing he was striking Jackson's rear, instead attacked Ewell head-on, and Jackson soon brought his whole force to bear on the Union troops in the Battle of Cross Keys. The men of the 68th came under concentrated fire for the first time but were not heavily involved in the battle, although two men were killed. The battle was a defeat for the Union, and Frémont's force did not attack again, being blocked instead by a small holding force from Ewell's wing. The rest of Jackson's force then turned to attack Shields's army the next day at Port Republic. Frémont's infantry did not figure in the battle, another Confederate victory, though his artillery shelled the enemy from long range.
After the battle, the 68th marched to Cedar Creek and the army was placed under the overall command of Maj. Gen. John Pope; Frémont's force was designated the First Corps of the Army of Virginia. Frémont, who outranked Pope, resigned in protest, and President Lincoln accepted the resignation. Lincoln replaced him with Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel, who had been commanding troops in the Western theater. Sigel was, like many in the First Corps, a German immigrant, and the 68th and the other German regiments in the First Corps were happy for the change in commanders. Sigel ordered the 68th to Luray for picket duty. When they arrived, Betge resigned his commission and Kleefish continued to command the regiment until a new colonel could be assigned.
## Second Bull Run
The regiment remained in the Shenandoah Valley until August 1862 when they joined Pope's army and moved south to engage Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. They arrived the day after the Battle of Cedar Mountain, and joined Pope's army in its retreat from that Confederate victory. After a series of minor actions along the Rappahannock, Pope's forces met Jackson's half of Lee's army near Manassas Station. Lee had divided his army into wings led by Jackson and Lt. Gen. James Longstreet and sent Jackson's force to raid Pope's rear to cut his supply line. Pope believed he had a chance to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia one half at a time, and made the decision to attack. Jackson's men struck the first blow, however, and drove off a portion of the Union force. The next day, having taken up a strong defensive position along an unfinished railroad, Jackson awaited Pope's advance. Pope obliged him, sending the Army forward against Jackson's lines. The 68th and the rest of Sigel's corps occupied the middle of the advancing line. They were unable to break Jackson's lines, and withdrew. The Cameron Rifles had seen some action at Cross Keys, but this was their first experience of fierce fighting and they acquitted themselves well, despite the failure of the attack.
By the afternoon, Longstreet joined Jackson with the other half of Lee's army and attacked the Union left. Longstreet believed it was too late for an attack, and did not attack that day, other than in a minor clash where his lines met some federal units at dusk. The next day, August 30, Pope attacked Jackson again at 3:00 p.m. Again, the attacking forces could not overcome their enemies' positions, and this time Longstreet counterattacked and forced them back toward their original positions. Sigel's forces, which did not take part in the initial Union assault, held firm against the Confederate counterattack, but after heavy casualties the army retreated. Among the casualties were 22 killed from the 68th (including Kleefish) and 59 wounded, making Second Bull Run one of the unit's bloodiest engagements.
The Army of Virginia retreated nearly all the way back to Washington. Pope was relieved and Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan placed in charge of the army once more. After burying Kleefish in Washington, the 68th redeployed to Fairfax, Virginia. With Kleefish dead and Betge having resigned, command of the regiment fell temporarily to Major Carl von Wedell. The officers then petitioned the Governor Horatio Seymour to commission Gotthilf von Bourry d'Ivernois as their new colonel, which he did. Von Bourry, a veteran of the Austrian army, had served on Blenker's staff as a captain and had impressed the officers of the 68th with his tales of heroism in the Second Italian War of Independence.
## Army of the Potomac
### Chancellorsville
The 68th spent September and October 1862 defending Washington where they were attached to Alexander Schimmelfennig's 1st Brigade of the XI Corps in the Army of the Potomac (the re-numbered I Corps formerly of the Army of Virginia) still commanded by Sigel. In November, they advanced to Centreville with the rest of the Army, now under the command of Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside, who had taken over the Army when McClellan was relieved of command earlier that month, was determined to bring battle to the enemy, and he ordered the Army to advance once more to the Rappahannock. The 68th, however, remained in reserve with the rest of the XI Corps, and so was spared any part in the defeat that befell the Union Army at the Battle of Fredericksburg. The Army retreated once again, and the 68th joined them in winter quarters at Stafford, Virginia.
Morale was low in the Army after Fredericksburg and the retreat that followed, and Burnside was replaced in command by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker. Several corps commanders were also replaced, including Sigel, whose XI Corps passed to Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard on April 2, 1863, when he resigned in protest because he believed he deserved a larger corps. In a corps of mostly German regiments, Howard was immediately unpopular and his distribution of religious tracts to the troops did not improve the relationship. The regiment was smaller, too, than it had been: just 259 present for duty. Their new commander in the XI Corps's 3rd Brigade was another German, Brig. Gen. Carl Schurz.
Hooker brought the Army to the Rappahannock for a third time, but rather than crossing directly into the defenses of the Confederates, he divided his much larger force to attack Lee's army from two sides simultaneously. This time, the 68th and the other regiments of the XI Corps were part of the action, crossing the river with Hooker's main force on May 1, 1863, to attack Lee's left. Despite Hooker's careful planning, the Battle of Chancellorsville was another Union defeat. After crossing the Rappahannock, Hooker had ordered the wing including the XI Corps to halt and await the Confederate attack. Faced with attacks on two sides, Lee daringly divided his smaller force to engage both: the pause allowed Lee to send Jackson with the bulk of the army to meet the Union advance and outflank their right wing the next day, May 2. Although he was warned of the impending attack, Howard did not order the units under his command to entrench, and when Jackson's men arrived the XI Corps was caught unprepared. At about 5:15 p.m., Jackson's force of 21,500 men caught the XI Corps in the flank and by surprise as the men were preparing their dinner. Schurz ordered his brigade to shift to meet the assault, and the 68th jumped to action, but they were still overwhelmed by the force of numbers and began a disorganized retreat an hour into the attack. After falling back, the 68th and the other retreating units rallied to avoid a complete rout and held off the Confederates until nightfall. The XI Corps suffered nearly 2,500 casualties, including 5 dead, 16 wounded, and 32 missing from the 68th. The next day, the XI Corps held the left of the Union line and was again attacked, but unlike the previous day, they were not at the focus of the Confederate attack. The entire army retreated across the Rappahannock the next day, defeated once more.
### Gettysburg
In the wake of Chancellorsville, newspapers heaped scorn on the German regiments, blaming the 68th and the others for the defeat. The XI Corps suffered from low morale, and several officers resigned their commissions, including Lt. Col. Carl Vogel and five others from the 68th. The Army of the Potomac pulled back from the Rappahannock, and was soon on the move as the Army of Northern Virginia slipped past and marched north toward Pennsylvania. Led by still another new commander, Maj. Gen. George Meade, the Union army followed the Confederates north. The 68th, now with 267 present for duty, had been shifted to the XI Corps's 1st Brigade under Brig. Gen. Leopold von Gilsa when the Army of the Potomac prepared to meet the rebels at the Battle of Gettysburg. The XI Corps was among the first to arrive on the scene on July 1, 1863. Schurz's brigade arrived first, and he ordered them to take up defensive positions north of the town. The other two divisions arrived next, and Howard arrayed them to resist the rebel onslaught he knew was coming soon. The landscape was mostly devoid of features that would aid in defense, but Gilsa's men were able to entrench on one low rise, Blocher's Knoll. The 68th was sent forward to skirmish, along with the 54th New York and part of the 153rd New York, and were the first to be attacked and ousted from their positions when Lt. Gen. Jubal Early's Confederate division came on in numbers and outflanked them. The army retreated south of the town, but Howard, after arguing with Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock over who was in command in Meade's absence, rallied the troops there and ordered them to entrench.
The 68th began the second day in a more defensible position on Cemetery Hill. This placed them at the center of the Union line, and most of the day's early action was on the flanks. In the evening, however, Early's forces attacked again; the charging Confederates quickly reached the top of the hill and some hand-to-hand combat broke out, but losses were light because the growing darkness made it difficult for soldiers on both sides to shoot accurately. Reinforcements from the II Corps arrived and helped the XI Corps hold the position. On the third day, the 68th remained in that position, but the major attack of the day, Pickett's Charge, was to their left. The 68th performed better than they had at Chancellorsville, participating in their first Union victory. They paid the price with much higher casualties, 8 killed and 63 wounded; 67 were made prisoners of war, many on the first day during the retreat to Cemetery Hill. In the thick of the action for two out of three days, the 68th lost more men at Gettysburg than in any other battle.
## Chattanooga campaign
Lee's army retreated into Virginia and, after some delay, the Army of the Potomac followed. After a skirmish in Hagerstown, Maryland, on July 12, the 68th crossed the Potomac into Virginia on July 16 and took up guard duty along the Orange and Alexandria Railroad near Warrenton. The regiment remained there until September, when it and the rest of the XI Corps were detached from the Army of the Potomac and sent to Tennessee. The XI and XII Corps, under Hooker's command, made up an independent force added to the Armies of the Tennessee, the Cumberland, and the Ohio, which were all operating in that theater. Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans, having just lost the Battle of Chickamauga, was besieged in Chattanooga, and the other armies were gathering to lift the siege and attack the Confederate army there, led by Lt. Gen. Braxton Bragg. Traveling for seven days by rail, the 68th arrived in Tennessee on September 30.
The regiment spent the first month guarding railroads again, this time west of Chattanooga. Rosecrans soon found himself relieved of duty, and Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was placed in overall command of the three armies plus Hooker's two corps. The 68th, too, saw a change in its leadership when Col. von Bourry was cashiered for drunkenness and command passed to Lt. Col. Albert von Steinhausen. By this time, losses from Gettysburg and illness had reduced the regiment to 127 men present for duty, just over a tenth of their numbers from the start of the war.
Grant's armies converged on Chattanooga and planned to attack Bragg's army. Getting into place required the XI and XII Corps to cross the Tennessee River at Bridgeport, Alabama, and march rapidly for Lookout Valley, opening the supply line to Chattanooga. They did so, to the surprise of the Confederate forces there, which had not expected an attack from that quarter. On October 28, Hooker's two corps were attacked by a part of Bragg's army, which had by now been joined by Longstreet and some units from the Army of Northern Virginia. Bragg ordered Longstreet to drive the federals back and he attacked. In the ensuing Battle of Wauhatchie, the XII Corps took the brunt of the initial assault. Hooker bypassed Howard and ordered Schurz to bring up the XI Corps to join the fight. The engagement was confused on both sides, but the Union forces were victorious, driving off the rebels and inflicting twice the casualties they received. With the supply lines now reopened to Chattanooga, Grant planned to dislodge Bragg's army. At the Battle of Lookout Mountain, the 68th was held in reserve on the first day, November 24. The battle continued the next day and a part of Howard's XI Corps, including the 68th, was shifted to the far left of the Union lines to reinforce Sherman's attack on Missionary Ridge. There, the 68th skirmished with the enemy, but was unable to advance. The Confederates were forced to retreat, however, as Maj. Gen. George Thomas's troops' assault on their center sent Bragg's army into retreat from the ridge.
Four days later, on November 28, the 68th, still attached to Sherman's army, marched north to relieve Burnside's army, which was besieged in Knoxville, Tennessee. Before they arrived, however, Burnside managed to defeat the enemy, and the regiment returned south. It spent the winter guarding railroads near their winter quarters in Bridgeport. In April, the enlistments of many three-year men were due to expire, including the men of the 68th. The men were sent to Louisville, Kentucky, and then by rail back to New York City for four weeks' leave of absence.Kummer, p. 570
</ref>
With the war not yet over, the government encouraged re-enlisting, and many of the 68th did so. The three-year men of the 8th and 29th Infantry, two other German-American units reduced by casualties and expiring enlistment terms, were consolidated into the 68th. Drafted men and substitutes brought the ranks up to 400 present for duty.
## Re-enlistment and the end of the war
Among those continuing in the army was the colonel of the 8th New York, Prince Felix Salm-Salm. As the 68th had been without a colonel since von Bourry had been cashiered, Governor Seymour appointed Salm-Salm to the post on June 8, 1864. The youngest son of a minor German prince, Salm-Salm had served in the Prussian and Austrian armies before coming to America and joining the Union Army in 1861. His appointment to lead the 68th caused consternation among the officers, who had hoped for the promotion of one of their own. They protested to the governor unsuccessfully, but accepted that Salm-Salm was to be their leader. After the commissions and re-enlistments were sorted out, the 68th returned to Tennessee. They were again serving under Hooker in the XX Corps, which was consolidated from the XI and XII Corps and had now been attached permanently to Thomas's Army of the Cumberland. The 68th was assigned to Maj. Gen. James B. Steedman's 4th Brigade of the new corps and spent the next few months patrolling the Nashville and Chattanooga Railway in Tennessee. By that time, Confederate resistance in the area was weakened, and the rails and bridges were not damaged. Salm-Salm's wife, Agnes, joined him during the winter of 1864–1865, and the officers spent much of their time entertaining.
The 68th was not involved in the Battle of Nashville that December, in which Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood's Confederate army was nearly destroyed, but Salm-Salm did get permission to join the battle himself while the 68th stayed at their patrol stations. After Thomas's victory at Nashville, the 68th was ordered to prepare to pursue what remained of Hood's army. They redeployed to Decatur, Alabama, where Salm-Salm rejoined the regiment. They skirmished with Hood's rear guard, but the rainy weather aided the Confederates' escape. Salm-Salm led the regiment in the minor engagements following in January and February 1865 at Elrod's Tan Yard, Hog Jaw Valley, and Johnson's Crook. As Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's Army of the Tennessee advanced farther into Georgia, the 68th did as well, making Atlanta their headquarters in March 1865. They continued to serve in northern Georgia through the spring and summer of 1865, and were stationed there when news came that the major Confederate armies had surrendered to Grant and Sherman. While there, they were ordered to facilitate the transition from a slave-based economy to a sharecropper system by encouraging plantation owners and their former slaves to sign farming contracts.
The 68th moved to Fort Pulaski, outside Savannah, Georgia, in October 1865. The men remained there until November 30, 1865, when, with the war finally ended, the 68th New York was mustered out of federal service. They boarded a steamship for New York and received their final pay at Hart's Island on December 14, where they disbanded. The regiment had served for more than four years, and had suffered casualties of 47 killed, 133 wounded, and 116 captured.
## See also
- List of New York Civil War regiments
|
48,951 |
Empress Matilda
| 1,173,840,485 |
Holy Roman Empress; claimant to the English throne during the Anarchy
|
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Empress Matilda (c. 7 February 1102 – 10 September 1167), also known as the Empress Maude, was one of the claimants to the English throne during the civil war known as the Anarchy. The daughter and heir of King Henry I of England, she went to Germany as a child when she was married to the future Holy Roman Emperor Henry V. She travelled with the emperor to Italy in 1116, was controversially crowned empress in St Peter's Basilica, and acted as the imperial regent in Italy. Matilda and Henry V had no children, and when he died in 1125, the imperial crown was claimed by his rival Lothair of Supplinburg.
Matilda's younger and only full brother, William Adelin, died in the White Ship disaster of 1120, leaving Matilda's father and realm facing a potential succession crisis. Upon her widowhood in the Holy Roman Empire, Matilda was recalled to Normandy by her father, who arranged for her to marry Geoffrey of Anjou to form an alliance to protect his southern borders in France. Henry I had no further legitimate children and nominated Matilda as his heir, making his court swear an oath of loyalty to her and her successors, but the decision was not popular in his Anglo-Norman court. Henry died in 1135, but Matilda and Geoffrey faced opposition from the barons. The throne was instead taken by Matilda's male cousin Stephen of Blois, who enjoyed the backing of the English Church. Stephen took steps to solidify his new regime but faced threats both from neighbouring powers and from opponents within his kingdom.
In 1139, Matilda crossed to England to take the kingdom by force, supported by her half-brother Robert of Gloucester and her uncle David I of Scotland, while her husband, Geoffrey, focused on conquering Normandy. Matilda's forces captured Stephen at the Battle of Lincoln in 1141, but the Empress's attempt to be crowned at Westminster Abbey collapsed in the face of bitter opposition from the London crowds. As a result of this retreat, Matilda was never formally declared Queen of England, and was instead titled "Lady of the English" (Latin: domina Anglorum). Robert was captured following the Rout of Winchester in 1141, and Matilda agreed to exchange him for Stephen. Matilda was besieged at Oxford Castle by Stephen's forces that winter, and to avoid capture was forced to escape at night across the frozen River Isis to Abingdon, reputedly wearing white as camouflage in the snow. The war degenerated into a stalemate, with Matilda controlling much of the south-west of England, and Stephen the south-east and the Midlands. Large parts of the rest of the country were in the hands of local, independent barons.
Matilda returned to Normandy, now in the hands of her husband, in 1148, leaving their eldest son to continue the campaign in England; he was eventually declared Stephen's heir and succeeded to the throne as Henry II in 1154, forming the Angevin Empire. She settled her court near Rouen and for the rest of her life concerned herself with the administration of Normandy, acting on her son's behalf when necessary. Particularly in the early years of her son's reign, she provided political advice and attempted to mediate during the Becket controversy. She worked extensively with the Church, founding Cistercian monasteries, and was known for her piety. She was buried under the high altar at Bec Abbey after her death in 1167, until much later her tomb was moved to Rouen Cathedral.
## Early life
Matilda was born to Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy, and his first wife, Matilda of Scotland, possibly on 7 February 1102 at Sutton Courtenay, in Berkshire. Henry was the youngest son of William the Conqueror, who had invaded England in 1066, creating an empire stretching into Wales. The invasion had created an Anglo-Norman elite, many with estates spread across both sides of the English Channel. These barons typically had close links to the Kingdom of France, which was then a loose collection of counties and smaller polities, under only the minimal control of the French king. Her mother Matilda was the daughter of King Malcolm III and Margaret of Wessex, a member of the West Saxon royal family, and a descendant of Alfred the Great. For Henry I, marrying Matilda of Scotland had given his reign increased legitimacy, and for her it had been an opportunity for high status and power in England.
Matilda had a younger, legitimate brother, William Adelin, and her father's relationships with numerous mistresses resulted in around 22 illegitimate siblings. Little is known about Matilda's earliest life, but she probably stayed with her mother, was taught to read, and was educated in religious morals. Among the nobles at the English court were her uncle David, later the king of Scotland, and aspiring nobles such as her illegitimate half-brother Robert of Gloucester, her cousin Stephen of Blois and Brian Fitz Count. In 1108, Henry left Matilda and her brother William Adelin in the care of Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury, while he travelled to Normandy; Anselm was a favoured cleric of Matilda's mother. There is no detailed description of Matilda's appearance; contemporaries described Matilda as being very beautiful, but this may have simply reflected the conventional practice among the chroniclers.
## Holy Roman Empire
### Marriage and coronation
In late 1108 or early 1109, Henry V of Germany sent envoys to Normandy proposing that Matilda marry him, and wrote separately to her mother on the same matter. The match was attractive to the English king: his daughter would be marrying into one of the most prestigious dynasties in Europe, reaffirming his own, slightly questionable, status as the youngest son of a new royal house, and gaining him an ally in dealing with France. In return, Henry V would receive a dowry of 10,000 marks, which he needed to fund an expedition to Rome for his coronation as the Holy Roman emperor. The final details of the deal were negotiated at Westminster in June 1109 and, as a result of her changing status, Matilda attended a royal council for the first time that October. She left England in February 1110 to make her way to Germany.
The couple met at Liège before travelling to Utrecht where, on 10 April, they became officially betrothed. On 25 July Matilda was crowned German queen in a ceremony at Mainz. There was a considerable age gap between the couple, as Matilda was only eight years old while Henry was 24. After the betrothal she was placed into the custody of Bruno, the archbishop of Trier, who was tasked with educating her in German culture, manners and government. In January 1114 Matilda was ready to be married to Henry, and their wedding was held at the city of Worms amid extravagant celebrations. Matilda now entered public life in Germany, complete with her own household.
Political conflict broke out across the empire shortly after the marriage, triggered when Henry arrested his chancellor, Archbishop Adalbert of Mainz, and various other German princes. Rebellions followed, accompanied by opposition from within the Church, which played an important part in administering the Empire, and this led to the formal excommunication of the Emperor by Pope Paschal II. Henry and Matilda marched over the Alps into Italy in early 1116, intent on settling matters permanently with the Pope. Matilda was now playing a full part in the imperial government, sponsoring royal grants, dealing with petitioners and taking part in ceremonial occasions. The rest of the year was spent establishing control of northern Italy, and in early 1117 the pair advanced on Rome itself.
Paschal fled when Henry and Matilda arrived with their army, and in his absence the papal envoy Maurice Bourdin, later antipope under the name Gregory VIII, crowned the pair at St Peter's Basilica, probably that Easter and certainly (again) at Pentecost. Matilda used these ceremonies to claim the title of empress of the Holy Roman Empire. The Empire was governed by monarchs who, like Henry V, had been elected by the major nobles to become the king. These kings typically hoped to be subsequently crowned by the pope as emperors, but this could not be guaranteed. Henry V had coerced Paschal II into crowning him in 1111, but Matilda's own status was less clear. As a result of her marriage to the King of the Romans she was clearly the legitimate Queen of the Romans, a title that she used thereafter on her seal and charters, but it was uncertain if she had a legitimate claim to the title of empress. After his imperial coronation in 1111, Henry continued to call himself king and emperor of the Romans interchangeably.
Both Bourdin's status and the ceremonies themselves were deeply ambiguous. Strictly speaking, the ceremonies were not imperial coronations but instead were formal "crown-wearing" occasions, among the few times in the year when the rulers would wear their crowns in court. Bourdin had also been excommunicated by the time he conducted the second ceremony, and he was later deposed and imprisoned for life by Pope Callixtus II. Nonetheless, Matilda maintained that she had been officially crowned as the empress in Rome. Her use of the title became widely accepted. Matilda consistently used the title empress from 1117 until her death; chanceries and chroniclers alike conceded her the honorific, seemingly without question.
### Widowhood
In 1118, Henry returned north over the Alps into Germany to suppress fresh rebellions, leaving Matilda as his regent to govern Italy. There are few records of her rule over the next two years, but she probably gained considerable practical experience of government. In 1119, she returned north to meet Henry in Lotharingia. Her husband was occupied in finding a compromise with the Pope, who had excommunicated him. In 1122, Henry and probably Matilda were at the Council of Worms. The council settled the long-running dispute with the Church when Henry gave up his rights to invest bishops with their episcopal regalia. Matilda attempted to visit her father in England that year, but the journey was blocked by Count Charles I of Flanders, whose territory she would have needed to pass through. Historian Marjorie Chibnall argues Matilda had intended to discuss the inheritance of the English crown on this journey.
Matilda and Henry remained childless, but neither party was considered to be infertile and contemporary chroniclers blamed their situation on the Emperor and his sins against the Church. In early 1122, the couple travelled down the Rhine together as Henry continued to suppress the ongoing political unrest, but by now he was suffering from cancer. He died on 23 May 1125 in Utrecht, leaving Matilda in the protection of their nephew Frederick, the heir to his estates, and in possession of the imperial insignia. It is unclear what instructions he gave her about the future of the Empire, which faced another leadership election. Archbishop Adalbert subsequently convinced Matilda that she should give him the insignia, and led the electoral process which appointed Lothair of Supplinburg, a former enemy of Henry, as the new king.
Now aged 23, Matilda had only limited options as to how she might spend the rest of her life. Being childless, she could not exercise a role as an imperial regent, which left her with the choice of either becoming a nun or remarrying. Some offers of marriage started to arrive from German princes, but she chose to return to Normandy. She does not appear to have expected to return to Germany, as she gave up her estates within the Empire and departed with her personal collection of jewels, her own imperial regalia, two of Henry's crowns, and the valuable relic of the Hand of St James the Apostle.
## Succession crisis
In 1120, the English political landscape had changed dramatically after the White Ship disaster. Around three hundred passengers – including Matilda's brother William Adelin and many other senior nobles – embarked one night on the White Ship to travel from Barfleur in Normandy across to England. The vessel foundered just outside the harbour, possibly as a result of overcrowding or excessive drinking by the ship's master and crew, and all but two of the passengers died. William Adelin was among the casualties.
With William dead, the succession to the English throne was thrown into doubt. Rules of succession were uncertain in western Europe at the time; in some parts of France, male primogeniture was becoming more popular, in which the eldest son would inherit a title. It was also traditional for the king of France to crown his successor while he was still alive, making the intended line of succession relatively clear. This was not the case in England, where the best a noble could do was to identify what Professor Eleanor Searle has termed a pool of legitimate heirs, leaving them to challenge and dispute the inheritance after his death. The problem was further complicated by the sequence of unstable Anglo-Norman successions over the previous sixty years. William the Conqueror had invaded England, his sons William Rufus and Robert Curthose had fought a war between them to establish their inheritance, and Henry had only acquired control of Normandy by force. There had been no peaceful, uncontested successions.
Initially, Henry put his hopes in fathering another son. William and Matilda's mother—Matilda of Scotland—had died in 1118, and so Henry took a new wife, Adeliza of Louvain. Henry and Adeliza did not conceive any children, and the future of the dynasty appeared at risk. Henry may have begun to look among his nephews for a possible heir. He may have considered his sister Adela's son Stephen of Blois as a possible option and, perhaps in preparation for this, he arranged a beneficial marriage for Stephen to Empress Matilda's wealthy maternal cousin Countess Matilda I of Boulogne. Count Theobald IV of Blois, another nephew and close ally, possibly also felt that he was in favour with Henry. William Clito, the only son of Robert Curthose, was King Louis VI of France's preferred choice, but William was in open rebellion against Henry and was therefore unsuitable. Henry might have also considered his own illegitimate son, Robert of Gloucester, as a possible candidate, but English tradition and custom would have looked unfavourably on this. Henry's plans shifted when Empress Matilda's husband, Emperor Henry, died in 1125.
## Return to Normandy
### Marriage to Geoffrey of Anjou
Matilda returned to Normandy in 1125 and spent about a year at the royal court, where her father was still hoping that his second marriage would generate a son. If this failed to happen, Matilda was Henry's preferred choice, and he declared that she was to be his rightful successor if he should not have another legitimate son. The Anglo-Norman barons were gathered together at Westminster on Christmas 1126, where they swore in January to recognise Matilda and any future legitimate heir she might have.
Henry began to formally look for a new husband for Matilda in early 1127 and received various offers from princes within the Empire. His preference was to use Matilda's marriage to secure the southern borders of Normandy by marrying her to Geoffrey, the eldest son of Count Fulk V of Anjou. Henry's control of Normandy had faced numerous challenges since he had conquered it in 1106, and the latest threat came from his nephew William Clito, the new count of Flanders, who enjoyed the support of the French king. It was essential to Henry that he not face a threat from the south as well as the east of Normandy. William Adelin had married Fulk's daughter Matilda, which would have cemented an alliance between Henry and Anjou, but the White Ship disaster put an end to this. Henry and Fulk argued over the fate of the marriage dowry, and this had encouraged Fulk to turn to support William Clito instead. Henry's solution was now to negotiate the marriage of Matilda to Geoffrey, recreating the former alliance.
Matilda appears to have been unimpressed by the prospect of marrying Geoffrey of Anjou. She felt that marrying the son of a count diminished her imperial status and was probably also unhappy about marrying someone so much younger than she was; Matilda was 25 and Geoffrey was 13. Hildebert, the Archbishop of Tours, eventually intervened to persuade her to go along with the engagement. Matilda finally agreed, and she travelled to Rouen in May 1127 with Robert of Gloucester and Brian Fitz Count where she was formally betrothed to Geoffrey. Over the course of the next year, Fulk decided to depart for Jerusalem, where he hoped to become king, leaving his possessions to Geoffrey. Henry knighted his future son-in-law, and Matilda and Geoffrey were married a week later on 17 June 1128 in Le Mans by the bishops of Le Mans and Séez. Fulk finally left Anjou for Jerusalem in 1129, declaring Geoffrey the count of Anjou and Maine.
### Disputes
The marriage proved difficult, as the couple did not particularly like each other. There was a further dispute over Matilda's dowry; she was granted various castles in Normandy by Henry, but it was not specified when the couple would actually take possession of them. It is also unknown whether Henry intended Geoffrey to have any future claim on England or Normandy, and he was probably keeping Geoffrey's status deliberately uncertain. Soon after the marriage, Matilda left Geoffrey and returned to Normandy. Henry appears to have blamed Geoffrey for the separation, but the couple were finally reconciled in 1131. Henry summoned Matilda from Normandy, and she arrived in England that August. It was decided that Matilda would return to Geoffrey at a meeting of the King's great council in September. The council also gave another collective oath of allegiance to recognise her as Henry's heir.
Matilda gave birth to her first son in March 1133 at Le Mans, the future Henry II. Henry I was delighted by the news and came to see her at Rouen. At Pentecost 1134, their second son Geoffrey was born in Rouen, but the childbirth was extremely difficult and Matilda appeared close to death. She made arrangements for her will and argued with her father about where she should be buried. Matilda preferred Bec Abbey, but Henry wanted her to be interred at Rouen Cathedral. Matilda recovered, and Henry was overjoyed by the birth of his second grandson, possibly insisting on another round of oaths from his nobility.
From then on, relations became increasingly strained between Matilda and Henry. Matilda and Geoffrey suspected that they lacked genuine support in England for their claim to the throne, and proposed in 1135 that the King should hand over the royal castles in Normandy to Matilda and should insist that the Norman nobility immediately swear allegiance to her. This would have given the couple a much more powerful position after Henry's death, but the King angrily refused, probably out of a concern that Geoffrey would try to seize power in Normandy while he was still alive. A fresh rebellion broke out in southern Normandy, and Geoffrey and Matilda intervened militarily on behalf of the rebels.
In the middle of this confrontation, Henry unexpectedly fell ill and died near Lyons-la-Forêt. It is uncertain what, if anything, Henry said about the succession before his death. Contemporary chronicler accounts were coloured by subsequent events. Sources favourable to Matilda suggested that Henry had reaffirmed his intent to grant all his lands to his daughter, while hostile chroniclers argued that Henry had renounced his former plans and had apologised for having forced the barons to swear an oath of allegiance to her.
### Road to war
When news began to spread of Henry I's death, Matilda and Geoffrey were in Anjou, supporting the rebels in their campaign against the royal army, which included a number of Matilda's supporters such as Robert of Gloucester. Many of these barons had taken an oath to stay in Normandy until the late king was properly buried, which prevented them from returning to England. Nonetheless, Geoffrey and Matilda took the opportunity to march into southern Normandy and seize a number of key castles around Argentan that had formed Matilda's disputed dowry. They then stopped, unable to advance further, pillaging the countryside and facing increased resistance from the Norman nobility and a rebellion in Anjou itself. Matilda was by now also pregnant with her third son, William; opinions vary among historians as to how much this affected her military plans.
Meanwhile, news of Henry's death had reached Stephen of Blois, conveniently placed in Boulogne, and he left for England, accompanied by his military household. Robert of Gloucester had garrisoned the ports of Dover and Canterbury and some accounts suggest that they refused Stephen access when he first arrived. Nonetheless Stephen reached the edge of London by 8 December and over the next week he began to seize power in England. The crowds in London proclaimed Stephen the new monarch, believing that he would grant the city new rights and privileges in return, and his brother, Henry of Blois, the bishop of Winchester, delivered the support of the Church to Stephen. Stephen had sworn to support Matilda in 1127, but Henry convincingly argued that the late King had been wrong to insist that his court take the oath, and suggested that the King had changed his mind on his deathbed. Stephen's coronation was held at Westminster Abbey on 22 December.
Following the news that Stephen was gathering support in England, the Norman nobility had gathered at Le Neubourg to discuss declaring his elder brother Theobald king. The Normans argued that the count, as the eldest grandson of William the Conqueror, had the most valid claim over the kingdom and the Duchy, and was certainly preferable to Matilda. Their discussions were interrupted by the sudden news from England that Stephen's coronation was to occur the next day. Theobald's support immediately ebbed away, as the barons were not prepared to support the division of England and Normandy by opposing Stephen.
Matilda gave birth to her third son William on 22 July 1136 at Argentan, and she then operated out of the border region for the next three years, establishing her household knights on estates around the area. Matilda may have asked Ulger, the bishop of Angers, to garner support for her claim with Pope Innocent II in Rome, but if she did, Ulger was unsuccessful. Geoffrey invaded Normandy in early 1136 and, after a temporary truce, invaded again later the same year, raiding and burning estates rather than trying to hold the territory. Stephen returned to the Duchy in 1137, where he met with Louis VI and Theobald to agree to an informal alliance against Geoffrey and Matilda, to counter the growing Angevin power in the region. Stephen formed an army to retake Matilda's Argentan castles, but frictions between his Flemish mercenary forces and the local Norman barons resulted in a battle between the two halves of his army. The Norman forces then deserted the King, forcing Stephen to give up his campaign. Stephen agreed to another truce with Geoffrey, promising to pay him 2,000 marks a year in exchange for peace along the Norman borders.
In England, Stephen's reign started off well, with lavish gatherings of the royal court that saw him give out grants of land and favours to his supporters. Stephen received the support of Pope Innocent II, thanks in part to the testimony of Louis VI and Theobald. Troubles rapidly began to emerge. Matilda's uncle, David I of Scotland, invaded the north of England on the news of Henry's death, taking Carlisle, Newcastle and other key strongholds. Stephen rapidly marched north with an army and met David at Durham, where a temporary compromise was agreed. South Wales rose in rebellion, and by 1137 Stephen was forced to abandon attempts to suppress the revolt. Stephen put down two revolts in the south-west led by Baldwin de Redvers and Robert of Bampton; Baldwin was released after his capture and travelled to Normandy, where he became a vocal critic of the King.
### Revolt
Matilda's half-brother, Robert of Gloucester, was one of the most powerful Anglo-Norman barons, controlling estates in Normandy as well as the Earldom of Gloucester. In 1138, he rebelled against Stephen, starting the descent into civil war in England. Robert renounced his fealty to the King and declared his support for Matilda, which triggered a major regional rebellion in Kent and across the south-west of England, although he himself remained in Normandy. Matilda had not been particularly active in asserting her claims to the throne since 1135 and in many ways it was Robert who took the initiative in declaring war in 1138. In France, Geoffrey took advantage of the situation by invading Normandy. David of Scotland also invaded the north of England once again, announcing that he was supporting the claim of Matilda to the throne, pushing south into Yorkshire.
Stephen responded quickly to the revolts and invasions, paying most of his attention to England rather than Normandy. His wife Matilda was sent to Kent with ships and resources from Boulogne, with the task of retaking the key port of Dover, under Robert's control. A small number of Stephen's household knights were sent north to help the fight against the Scots, where David's forces were defeated later that year at the Battle of the Standard. Despite this victory, however, David still occupied most of the north. Stephen himself went west in an attempt to regain control of Gloucestershire, first striking north into the Welsh Marches, taking Hereford and Shrewsbury, before heading south to Bath. The town of Bristol itself proved too strong for him, and Stephen contented himself with raiding and pillaging the surrounding area. The rebels appear to have expected Robert to intervene with support, but he remained in Normandy throughout the year, trying to persuade the Empress Matilda to invade England herself. Dover finally surrendered to the Queen's forces later in the year.
By 1139, an invasion of England by Robert and Matilda appeared imminent. Geoffrey and Matilda had secured much of Normandy and, together with Robert, spent the beginning of the year mobilising forces for a cross-Channel expedition. Matilda also appealed to the papacy at the start of the year; her representative, Bishop Ulger, put forward her legal claim to the English throne on the grounds of her hereditary right and the oaths sworn by the barons. Arnulf of Lisieux led Stephen's case, arguing that because Matilda's mother had really been a nun, her claim to the throne was illegitimate. The Pope declined to reverse his earlier support for Stephen, but from Matilda's perspective the case usefully established that Stephen's claim was disputed.
## Civil War
### Initial moves
Empress Matilda's invasion finally began at the end of the summer of 1139. Baldwin de Redvers crossed over from Normandy to Wareham in August in an initial attempt to capture a port to receive Matilda's invading army, but Stephen's forces forced him to retreat into the south-west. The following month, the Empress was invited by her stepmother, Queen Adeliza, to land at Arundel instead, and on 30 September Robert of Gloucester and Matilda arrived in England with a force of 140 knights. Matilda stayed at Arundel Castle, while Robert marched north-west to Wallingford and Bristol, hoping to raise support for the rebellion and to link up with Miles of Gloucester, who took the opportunity to renounce his fealty to the King and declare for Matilda.
Stephen responded by promptly moving south, besieging Arundel and trapping Matilda inside the castle. Stephen then agreed to a truce proposed by his brother, Henry of Blois; the full details of the agreement are not known, but the results were that Matilda and her household of knights were released from the siege and escorted to the south-west of England, where they were reunited with Robert of Gloucester. The reasons for Matilda's release remain unclear. Stephen may have thought it was in his own best interests to release the Empress and concentrate instead on attacking Robert, seeing Robert, rather than Matilda, as his main opponent at this point in the conflict. Arundel Castle was also considered almost impregnable, and Stephen may have been worried that he risked tying down his army in the south whilst Robert roamed freely in the west. Another theory is that Stephen released Matilda out of a sense of chivalry; Stephen had a generous, courteous personality and women were not normally expected to be targeted in Anglo-Norman warfare.
After staying for a period in Robert's stronghold of Bristol, Matilda established her court in nearby Gloucester, still safely in the south-west but far enough away for her to remain independent of her half-brother. Although there had been only a few new defections to her cause, Matilda still controlled a compact block of territory stretching out from Gloucester and Bristol south into Wiltshire, west into the Welsh Marches and east through the Thames Valley as far as Oxford and Wallingford, threatening London. Her influence extended down into Devon and Cornwall, and north through Herefordshire, but her authority in these areas remained limited.
She faced a counterattack from Stephen, who started by attacking Wallingford Castle which controlled the Thames corridor; it was held by Brian Fitz Count and Stephen found it too well defended. Stephen continued into Wiltshire to attack Trowbridge, taking the castles of South Cerney and Malmesbury en route. In response, Miles marched east, attacking Stephen's rearguard forces at Wallingford and threatening an advance on London. Stephen was forced to give up his western campaign, returning east to stabilise the situation and protect his capital.
At the start of 1140, Nigel, the Bishop of Ely, joined Matilda's faction. Hoping to seize East Anglia, he established his base of operations in the Isle of Ely, then surrounded by protective fenland. Nigel faced a rapid response from Stephen, who made a surprise attack on the isle, forcing the Bishop to flee to Gloucester. Robert of Gloucester's men retook some of the territory that Stephen had taken in his 1139 campaign. In an effort to negotiate a truce, Henry of Blois held a peace conference at Bath, at which Matilda was represented by Robert. The conference collapsed after Henry and the clergy insisted that they should set the terms of any peace deal, which Stephen's representatives found unacceptable.
### Battle of Lincoln
Matilda's fortunes changed dramatically for the better at the start of 1141. Ranulf of Chester, a powerful northern magnate, had fallen out with the King over the winter and Stephen had placed his castle in Lincoln under siege. In response, Robert of Gloucester and Ranulf advanced on Stephen's position with a larger force, resulting in the Battle of Lincoln on 2 February 1141. The King commanded the centre of his army, with Alan of Brittany on his right and William of Aumale on his left. Robert and Ranulf's forces had a superiority in cavalry and Stephen dismounted many of his own knights to form a solid infantry block. After an initial success in which William's forces destroyed the Angevins' Welsh infantry, the battle went well for Matilda's forces. Robert and Ranulf's cavalry encircled Stephen's centre, and the King found himself surrounded by the Angevin army. After much fighting, Robert's soldiers finally overwhelmed Stephen and he was taken away from the field in custody.
Matilda received Stephen in person at her court in Gloucester, before having him moved to Bristol Castle, traditionally used for holding high-status prisoners. Matilda now began to take the necessary steps to have herself crowned queen in his place, which would require the agreement of the Church and her coronation at Westminster. Stephen's brother Henry summoned a council at Winchester before Easter in his capacity as papal legate to consider the clergy's view. Matilda had made a private deal with Henry that he would deliver the support of the Church in exchange for being granted control over Church affairs. Henry handed over the royal treasury to her, which proved to be rather depleted except for Stephen's crown, and he excommunicated many of her enemies who refused to switch sides. Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury was unwilling to declare Matilda queen so rapidly, however, and a delegation of clergy and nobles, headed by Theobald, travelled to Bristol to see Stephen, who agreed that, given the situation, he was prepared to release his subjects from their oath of fealty to him.
The clergy gathered again in Winchester after Easter, on 7 April 1141, and the following day they declared that Matilda should be monarch in place of Stephen. She assumed the title "Lady of England and Normandy" (Latin: domina Anglorum, lit. 'Lady of the English') as a precursor to her coronation. Although Matilda's own followers attended the event, few other major nobles seem to have attended and the delegation from London procrastinated. Stephen's wife, Queen Matilda, wrote to complain and demand her husband's release. Nonetheless, Matilda then advanced to London to arrange her coronation in June, where her position became precarious. Despite securing the support of Geoffrey de Mandeville, who controlled the Tower of London, forces loyal to Stephen and Queen Matilda remained close to the city and the citizens were fearful about welcoming the Empress. On 24 June, shortly before the planned coronation, the city rose up against the Empress and Geoffrey de Mandeville; Matilda and her followers fled just in time, making a chaotic retreat back to Oxford.
Meanwhile, Geoffrey of Anjou invaded Normandy again and, in the absence of Waleran of Beaumont, who was still fighting in England, Geoffrey took all the Duchy south of the River Seine and east of the Risle. No help was forthcoming from Stephen's brother Theobald this time either, who appears to have been preoccupied with his own problems with France—the new French king, Louis VII, had rejected his father's regional alliance, improving relations with Anjou and taking a more bellicose line with Theobald, which would result in war the following year. Geoffrey's success in Normandy and Stephen's weakness in England began to influence the loyalty of many Anglo-Norman barons, who feared losing their lands in England to Robert and the Empress, and their possessions in Normandy to Geoffrey. Many started to leave Stephen's faction. His friend and advisor Waleran was one of those who decided to defect in mid-1141, crossing into Normandy to secure his ancestral possessions by allying himself with the Angevins, and bringing Worcestershire into the Empress's camp. Waleran's twin brother, Robert of Leicester, effectively withdrew from fighting in the conflict at the same time. Other supporters of the Empress were restored in their former strongholds, such as Bishop Nigel of Ely, and still others received new earldoms in the west of England. The royal control over the minting of coins broke down, leading to coins being struck by local barons and bishops across the country.
### Rout of Winchester and the Siege of Oxford
Matilda's position was transformed by her defeat at the Rout of Winchester. Her alliance with Henry of Blois proved short-lived and they soon fell out over political patronage and ecclesiastical policy; the Bishop transferred his support back to Stephen's cause. In response, in July Matilda and Robert of Gloucester besieged Henry of Blois in his episcopal castle at Winchester, using the royal castle in the city as the base for their operations. Stephen's wife, Queen Matilda, had kept his cause alive in the south-east of England, and the Queen, backed by her lieutenant William of Ypres and reinforced with fresh troops from London, took the opportunity to advance on Winchester. Their forces encircled Matilda's army. Matilda decided to escape from the city with Fitz Count and Reginald of Cornwall, while the rest of her army delayed the royal forces. In the subsequent battle the Empress's forces were defeated and Robert of Gloucester himself was taken prisoner during the retreat, although Matilda herself escaped, exhausted, to her fortress at Devizes.
With both Stephen and Robert held prisoner, negotiations were held to try to come to agreement on a long-term peace settlement, but Queen Matilda was unwilling to offer any compromise to the Empress, and Robert refused to accept any offer to encourage him to change sides to Stephen. Instead, in November the two sides simply exchanged the two leaders, Stephen returning to his queen, and Robert to the Empress in Oxford. Henry held another church council, which reversed its previous decision and reaffirmed Stephen's legitimacy to rule, and a fresh coronation of Stephen and Matilda occurred at Christmas 1141. Stephen travelled north to raise new forces and to successfully persuade Ranulf of Chester to change sides once again. Stephen then spent the summer attacking some of the new Angevin castles built the previous year, including Cirencester, Bampton and Wareham.
During the summer of 1142 Robert returned to Normandy to assist Geoffrey with operations against some of Stephen's remaining followers there, before returning in the autumn. Matilda came under increased pressure from Stephen's forces and was surrounded at Oxford. Oxford was a secure town, protected by walls and the River Isis, but Stephen led a sudden attack across the river, leading the charge and swimming part of the way. Once on the other side, the King and his men stormed into the town, trapping Matilda in the castle. Oxford Castle was a powerful fortress and, rather than storming it, Stephen decided to settle down for a long siege. Just before Christmas, Matilda sneaked out of the castle with a handful of knights (probably via a postern gate), crossed the icy river and made her escape past the royal army on foot to Abingdon-on-Thames and then riding to safety at Wallingford, leaving the castle garrison to surrender the next day. Matilda and her companions reportedly wore white to camouflage themselves against the snow.
### Stalemate
In the aftermath of the retreat from Winchester, Matilda rebuilt her court at Devizes Castle in Wiltshire, a former property of the Bishop of Salisbury that had been confiscated by Stephen. She established her household knights on the surrounding estates, supported by Flemish mercenaries, ruling through the network of local sheriffs and other officials. Many of those that had lost lands in the regions held by the King travelled west to take up patronage from Matilda. Backed by the pragmatic Robert of Gloucester, Matilda was content to engage in a drawn-out struggle, and the war soon entered a stalemate.
At first, the balance of power appeared to move slightly in Matilda's favour. Robert of Gloucester besieged Stephen in 1143 at Wilton Castle, an assembly point for royal forces in Herefordshire. Stephen attempted to break out and escape, resulting in the Battle of Wilton. Once again, the Angevin cavalry proved too strong, and for a moment it appeared that Stephen might be captured for a second time, before finally managing to escape. Later in the year Geoffrey de Mandeville, the Earl of Essex, rose up in rebellion against Stephen in East Anglia. Geoffrey based himself from the Isle of Ely and began a military campaign against Cambridge, with the intention of progressing south towards London. Ranulf of Chester revolted once again in the summer of 1144. Meanwhile, Geoffrey of Anjou finished securing his hold on southern Normandy, and in January 1144 he advanced into Rouen, the capital of the Duchy, concluding his campaign. Louis VII recognised him as Duke of Normandy shortly after.
Despite these successes, Matilda was unable to consolidate her position. Miles of Gloucester, one of the most talented of her military commanders, had died while hunting over the previous Christmas. Geoffrey de Mandeville's rebellion against Stephen in the east ended with his death in September 1144 during an attack on Burwell Castle in Cambridgeshire. As a result, Stephen made progress against Matilda's forces in the west in 1145, recapturing Faringdon Castle in Oxfordshire. Matilda authorised Reginald, the Earl of Cornwall, to attempt fresh peace negotiations, but neither side was prepared to compromise.
### Conclusion of the war
The character of the conflict in England gradually began to shift; by the late 1140s, the major fighting in the war was over, giving way to an intractable stalemate, with only the occasional outbreak of fresh fighting. Several of Matilda's key supporters died: in 1147 Robert of Gloucester died peacefully, and Brian Fitz Count gradually withdrew from public life, probably eventually joining a monastery; by 1151 he was dead. Many of Matilda's other followers joined the Second Crusade when it was announced in 1145, leaving the region for several years. Some of the Anglo-Norman barons made individual peace agreements with each other to secure their lands and war gains, and many were not keen to pursue any further conflict.
Matilda's eldest son Henry slowly began to assume a leading role in the conflict. He had remained in France when the Empress first left for England. He crossed over to England in 1142, before returning to Anjou in 1144. Geoffrey of Anjou expected Henry to become the King of England and began to involve him in the government of the family lands. In 1147, Henry intervened in England with a small mercenary army but the expedition failed, not least because Henry lacked the funds to pay his men. Henry asked his mother for money, but she refused, stating that she had none available. In the end Stephen himself ended up paying off Henry's mercenaries, allowing him to return home safely; his reasons for doing so remain unclear.
Matilda decided to return to Normandy in 1148, partially due to her difficulties with the Church. The Empress had occupied the strategically essential Devizes Castle in 1142, maintaining her court there, but legally it still belonged to Josceline de Bohon, the bishop of Salisbury, and in late 1146 Pope Eugene III intervened to support his claims, threatening Matilda with excommunication if she did not return it. Matilda first played for time, then left for Normandy in early 1148, leaving the castle to Henry, who then procrastinated over its return for many years. Matilda re-established her court in Rouen, where she met with her sons and husband and probably made arrangements for her future life in Normandy, and for Henry's next expedition to England. Matilda chose to live in the priory of Notre Dame du Pré, situated just south of Rouen, where she lived in personal quarters attached to the priory and in a nearby palace built by Henry.
Matilda increasingly devoted her efforts to the administration of Normandy, rather than to the war in England. Geoffrey sent the bishop of Thérouanne to Rome in 1148 to campaign for Henry's right to the English throne, and opinion within the English Church gradually shifted in Henry's favour. Matilda and Geoffrey made peace with Louis VII, who in return supported Henry's rights to Normandy. Geoffrey died unexpectedly in 1151, and Henry claimed the family lands. Henry returned to England once again at the start of 1153 with a small army, winning the support of some of the major regional barons. Neither side's army was keen to fight, however, and the Church brokered a truce; a permanent peace followed, under which Henry recognised Stephen as king, but became Stephen's adopted son and successor. Meanwhile, Normandy faced considerable disorder and the threat of baronial revolt, which Matilda was unable to totally suppress. Stephen died the next year, and Henry assumed the throne; his coronation used the grander of the two imperial crowns that Matilda had brought back from Germany in 1125. Once Henry had been crowned, the troubles facing Matilda in Normandy died away.
## Later life
Matilda spent the rest of her life in Normandy, often acting as Henry's representative and presiding over the government of the Duchy. Early on, Matilda and her son issued charters in England and Normandy in their joint names, dealing with the various land claims that had arisen during the wars. Particularly in the initial years of his reign, the King drew on her for advice on policy matters. Matilda was involved in attempts to mediate between Henry and his Chancellor Thomas Becket when the two men fell out in the 1160s. Matilda had originally cautioned against the appointment, but when the Prior of Mont St Jacques asked her for a private interview on Becket's behalf to seek her views, she provided a moderate perspective on the problem. Matilda explained that she disagreed with Henry's attempts to codify English customs, which Becket opposed as well, but also condemned poor administration in the English Church and Becket's own headstrong behaviour.
Matilda helped to deal with several diplomatic crises. The first of these involved the Hand of St James, the relic which Matilda had brought back with her from Germany many years before. Frederick I, the Holy Roman Emperor, considered the hand to be part of the imperial regalia and requested that Henry return it to Germany. Matilda and Henry were equally insistent that it should remain at Reading Abbey, where it had become a popular attraction for visiting pilgrims. Frederick was bought off with an alternative set of expensive gifts from England, including a huge, luxurious tent, probably chosen by Matilda, which Frederick used for court events in Italy. She was also approached by Louis VII of France, in 1164, and helped to defuse a growing diplomatic row over the handling of Crusading funds.
In her old age Matilda paid increasing attention to Church affairs and her personal faith, although she remained involved in governing Normandy throughout her life. Matilda appears to have had particular fondness for her youngest son William. She opposed Henry's proposal in 1155 to invade Ireland and give the lands to William, however, possibly on the grounds that the project was impractical, and instead William received large grants of land in England. Matilda was more easy-going in her later life than in her youth, but the chronicler of Mont St Jacques, who met her during this period, still felt that she appeared to be "of the stock of tyrants".
## Death
Matilda died on 10 September 1167 in Rouen, and her remaining wealth was given to the Church. She was buried under the high altar at the abbey of Bec-Hellouin in a service led by Rotrou, the archbishop of Rouen. Her tomb's epitaph included the lines "Great by birth, greater by marriage, greatest in her offspring: here lies Matilda, the daughter, wife, and mother of Henry", which became a famous phrase among her contemporaries. This tomb was damaged in a fire in 1263 and later restored in 1282, before finally being destroyed by an English army in 1421. In 1684 the Congregation of St Maur identified some of her remaining bones and reburied them at Bec-Hellouin in a new coffin. Her remains were lost again after the destruction of Bec-Hellouin's church by Napoleon, but were found once more in 1846 and this time reburied at Rouen Cathedral, where they remain.
## Matilda as ruler
### Government, law and court
In the Holy Roman Empire, the young Matilda's court included knights, chaplains and ladies-in-waiting, although, unlike some queens of the period, she did not have her own personal chancellor to run her household, instead using the imperial chancellor. When acting as regent in Italy, she found the local rulers were prepared to accept a female ruler. Her Italian administration included the Italian chancellor, backed by experienced administrators. She was not called upon to make any major decisions, instead dealing with smaller matters and acting as the symbolic representative of her absent husband, meeting with and helping to negotiate with magnates and clergy.
The Anglo-Saxon queens of England had exercised considerable formal power, but this tradition had diminished under the Normans: at most their queens ruled temporarily as regents on their husbands' behalf when they were away travelling, rather than in their own right. On her return from Germany to Normandy and Anjou, Matilda styled herself as empress and the daughter of King Henry. As an imperatrix, 'empress', her status was elevated in medieval social and political thought above all men in England and France. On arrival in England, her charters' seal displayed the inscription Mathildis dei gratia Romanorum Regina, 'Matilda by the grace of God, Queen of the Romans'. Matilda's enthroned portrait on her circular seal distinguished her from elite English contemporaries, both women – whose seals were usually oval with standing portraits – and men, whose seals were usually equestrian portraits. The seal did not depict her on horseback, however, as a male ruler would have been. During the civil war for England, her status was uncertain; these unique distinctions were intended to overawe her subjects. Matilda also remained Henrici regis filia, 'daughter of King Henry', a status that emphasised her claim to the crown was hereditary and derived from her male kin, being the only legitimate offspring of King Henry and Queen Matilda. It further advertised her mixed Anglo-Saxon and Norman descent and her claim as her royal father's sole heir in a century in which feudal tenancies were increasingly passed on by heredity and primogeniture.
In contrast with her rival Stephen and his wife Matilda of Boulogne — styled respectively rex Anglorum, 'King of the English' and regina Anglorum, 'Queen of the English' — Empress Matilda employed the title domina Anglorum. Several interpretations of the title (Latin: domina, lit. 'mistress'), are possible. Domina, is the feminine equivalent of the title dominus, the meaning of which ranged from head of a household to an imperial title and translated as "master" or "lord". Whereas the Old English: cwen, lit. 'queen' carried the implication of a king's wife only, the Old English: hlaefdige, lit. 'lady' was used of a woman exercising temporal powers in her own right, as had Æthelflæd of Mercia. Notably, Matilda's husband Geoffrey never adopted the equivalent dominus Anglorum. Initially between 1139 and 1141 Matilda referred to herself as acting as a feme sole, "a woman [acting] alone", highlighting her autonomy and independence from her spouse. Additionally, it was also conventional that newly elected kings use dominus until their coronation as rex, 'king', the interval being counted as an interregnum. Since she was never crowned at Westminster, during the rest of the war she appears to have used this title rather than that of the queen of England, although some contemporaries referred to her by the royal title. In spring and summer 1141, as Matilda was de facto queen regnant, some royal charters including titles of lands granted to Glastonbury Abbey and Reading Abbey described her as regina Anglorum, while another mentions coronae meae, 'my crown' and regni mei, 'my kingdom'. While Marjorie Chibnall believed the Glastonbury and Reading Abbeys' instances of regina Anglorum are either errors for domina Anglorum or else inauthentic; David Crouch judged this unlikely to be a scribal error and pointed out that Stephen's supporters had used rex Anglorum before his formal coronation, that she was hailed as regina et domina at Winchester in March 1141, and that she "gloried in being called" the royal title. Nonetheless, the style domina Anglorum, now rendered as "Lady of the English", remained more common in documents. The chronicler William of Malmsebury calls her domina only.
Matilda presented herself as continuing the English tradition of centralised royal government, and attempted to maintain a government in England parallel to Stephen's, including a royal household and a chancellor. Matilda gathered revenues from the royal estates in the counties under her control, particularly in her core territories where the sheriffs were loyal to her cause. She appointed earls to rival those created by Stephen. She was unable to operate a system of royal law courts, however, and her administrative resources were extremely limited, although some of her clerks went on to become bishops in Normandy. Matilda issued two types of coins in her name during her time in England, which were used in the west of England and Wales. The first were initially minted in Oxford during her stay there, and the design was then adopted by her mints at Bristol, Cardiff and Wareham after her victory at the Battle of Lincoln. A second design was minted at Bristol and Cardiff during the 1140s.
On returning to Normandy for the last time in 1148, Matilda ceased to use the title Lady of the English, simply styling herself as empress again; she never adopted the title of Countess of Anjou. Matilda's household became smaller, and often merged with Henry's own court when the two were co-located in Rouen. She continued to play a special role in the government of the area around Argentan, where she held feudal rights from the grants made at the time of her second marriage.
### Relations with the Church
It is unclear how strong Matilda's personal piety was, although contemporaries praised her lifelong preference to be buried at the monastic site of Bec rather than the grander but more worldly Rouen, and believed her to have substantial, underlying religious beliefs. Like other members of the Anglo-Norman nobility, she bestowed considerable patronage on the Church. Early on in her life, she preferred the well-established Benedictine monastery of Cluny alongside some of the newer Augustinian orders, such as the Victorines and Premonstratensians. As part of this patronage, she re-founded the abbey of Notre-Dame-du-Vœu near Cherbourg.
As time went by, Matilda directed more of her attention to the Cistercian order. This order was very fashionable in England and Normandy during the period, and was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, a figure of particular importance to Matilda. She had close links to the Cistercian Mortemer Abbey in Normandy, and drew on the house for a supply of monks when she supported the foundation of nearby La Valasse. She encouraged the Cistercians to build at Mortemer on a grand scale, with guest houses to accommodate a range of visitors of all ranks, and may have played a part in selecting the paintings for the monastic chapels.
## Legacy
### Historiography
Contemporary chroniclers in England, France, Germany and Italy documented many aspects of Matilda's life, although the only biography of her, apparently written by Arnulf of Lisieux, has been lost. The chroniclers took a range of perspectives on her. In Germany, the chroniclers praised Matilda extensively and her reputation as the "good Matilda" remained positive. During the years of the Anarchy, works such as the Gesta Stephani took a much more negative tone, praising Stephen and condemning Matilda. Once Henry II assumed the throne, the tone of the chroniclers towards Matilda became more positive. Legends spread in the years after Matilda's death, including the suggestion that her first husband, Henry, had not died but had in fact secretly become a hermit – making Matilda's second marriage illegitimate – and a tale that Matilda had an affair with Stephen, resulting in the conception of Henry II.
Tudor scholars were interested in Matilda's right of succession. According to 16th-century standards, Matilda had a clear right to the English throne, and academics therefore struggled to explain why Matilda had acquiesced to her son Henry's kingship at the end of the war, rather than ruling directly herself. By the 18th century, historians such as David Hume had a much better understanding of the irregular nature of 12th-century law and custom and this question became less relevant. By the 19th century, the archival sources on Matilda's life, including charters, foundation histories, and letters, were being uncovered and analysed. Historians Kate Norgate, Sir James Ramsay and J. H. Round used these to produce new, richer accounts of Matilda and the civil war; Ramsay's account, using the Gesta Stephani, was not complimentary, while Norgate, drawing on French sources, was more neutral in tone. The German academic Oskar Rössler's 1897 biography drew heavily on German charters, not extensively used by Anglophone historians.
Matilda has attracted relatively little attention from modern English academics, being treated as a marginal figure in comparison to other contemporaries, particularly her rival Stephen, in contrast to the work carried out by German scholars on her time in the Empire. Popular, but not always accurate, biographies were written by the Earl of Onslow in 1939 and Nesta Pain in 1978, but the only major academic biography in English remains Marjorie Chibnall's 1991 work. Interpretations of Matilda's character have shifted over time, but there is, as Chibnall describes, a "general agreement that she was either proud or at least keenly conscious of the high status of an empress". Like both Henry I and Henry II, Matilda had a certain autocratic grandeur, which was combined with a firm moral belief in her cause; ultimately however she was limited by the political conventions of the 12th century. The treatment of Matilda by modern historians has been challenged by feminist scholars, including Fiona Tolhurst, who believe some traditional assumptions about her role and personality show gender bias. In this interpretation, Matilda has been unfairly criticised for showing qualities that have been considered praiseworthy when seen in her male contemporaries.
### Popular culture
The civil war years of Matilda's life have been the subject of historical fiction. Matilda, Stephen and their supporters feature in Ellis Peters's historical detective series about Brother Cadfael, set between 1137 and 1145. Peters paints the Empress as proud and aloof, in contrast to Stephen, a tolerant man and a reasonable ruler. Matilda's martial reputation may also have contributed to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's decision to entitle his 1855 battle poem "Maud".
## Family tree
Matilda's family tree:
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71,989 |
Uncle Tom's Cabin
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1852 novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe
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"1852 American novels",
"American Christian novels",
"American novels adapted into films",
"American novels adapted into plays",
"American novels adapted into television shows",
"Books about human rights",
"Censored books",
"Cultural history of the American Civil War",
"Novels about American slavery",
"Novels adapted into comics",
"Novels by Harriet Beecher Stowe",
"Novels first published in serial form",
"Origins of the American Civil War",
"Race-related controversies in literature",
"Red River of the South",
"Sentimental novels",
"Slave cabins and quarters in the United States",
"Social novels",
"Southern United States in fiction",
"Uncle Tom's Cabin",
"Works originally published in American magazines",
"Works originally published in political magazines"
] |
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S., and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the [American] Civil War".
Stowe, a Connecticut-born woman of English descent, was part of the religious Beecher family and an active abolitionist. She wrote the sentimental novel to depict the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love could overcome slavery. The novel focuses on the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of the other characters revolve.
In the United States, Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel and the second best-selling book of the 19th century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. The influence attributed to the book was so great that a likely apocryphal story arose of Abraham Lincoln meeting Stowe at the start of the Civil War and declaring, "So this is the little lady who started this great war."
The book and the plays it inspired helped popularize a number of negative stereotypes about black people, including that of the namesake character "Uncle Tom". The term came to be associated with an excessively subservient person. These later associations with Uncle Tom's Cabin have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical effects of the book as a "vital antislavery tool". Nonetheless, the novel remains a "landmark" in protest literature, with later books such as The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson owing a large debt to it.
## Publication
Uncle Tom's Cabin first appeared as a 40-week serial in The National Era, an abolitionist periodical, starting with the June 5, 1851, issue. It was originally intended as a shorter narrative that would run for only a few weeks. Stowe expanded the story significantly, however, and it was instantly popular, such that protests were sent to the Era office when she missed an issue. The final installment was released in the April 1, 1852, issue of Era. Stowe arranged for the story's copyright to be registered with the United States District Court for the District of Maine. She renewed her copyright in 1879 and the work entered the public domain on May 12, 1893.
While the story was still being serialized, the publisher John P. Jewett contracted with Stowe to turn Uncle Tom's Cabin into a book. Convinced the book would be popular, Jewett made the unusual decision (for the time) to have six full-page illustrations by Hammatt Billings engraved for the first printing. Published in book form on March 20, 1852, the novel sold 3,000 copies on that day alone, and soon sold out its complete print run. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States. Eight printing presses, running incessantly, could barely keep up with the demand.
By mid-1853, sales of the book dramatically decreased and Jewett went out of business during the Panic of 1857. In June 1860, the right to publish Uncle Tom's Cabin passed to the Boston firm Ticknor and Fields, which put the book back in print in November 1862. After that demand began to yet again increase. Houghton Mifflin Company acquired the rights from Ticknor in 1878. In 1879, a new edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin was released, repackaging the novel as an "American classic". Through the 1880s until its copyright expired, the book served as a mainstay and reliable source of income for Houghton Mifflin. By the end of the nineteenth century, the novel was widely available in a large number of editions and in the United States it became the second best-selling book of that century after the Bible.
Uncle Tom's Cabin sold equally well in Britain; the first London edition appeared in May 1852 and sold 200,000 copies. In a few years, over 1.5 million copies of the book were in circulation in Britain, although most of these were infringing copies (a similar situation occurred in the United States). By 1857, the novel had been translated into 20 languages. Translator Lin Shu published the first Chinese translation in 1901, which was also the first American novel translated into that language.
## Plot
### Eliza escapes with her son; Tom sold "down the river"
The book opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife Emily Shelby believe that they have a benevolent relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to raise the needed funds by selling two of them—Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man with a wife and children, and Harry, the son of Emily Shelby's maid Eliza—to Mr. Haley, a coarse slave trader. Emily Shelby is averse to this idea because she had promised her maid that her child would never be sold; Emily's son, George Shelby, hates to see Tom go because he sees the man as his friend and mentor.
When Eliza overhears Mr. and Mrs. Shelby discussing plans to sell Tom and Harry, Eliza determines to run away with her son. The novel states that Eliza made this decision because she fears losing her only surviving child (she had already miscarried two children). Eliza departs that night, leaving a note of apology to her mistress. She later makes a dangerous crossing over the ice of the Ohio River to escape her pursuers.
As Tom is sold, Mr. Haley takes him to a riverboat on the Mississippi River and from there Tom is to be transported to a slave market. While on board, Tom meets Eva, an angelic little white girl. They quickly become friends. Eva falls into the river and Tom dives into the river to save her life. Being grateful to Tom, Eva's father Augustine St. Clare buys him from Haley and takes him with the family to their home in New Orleans. Tom and Eva begin to relate to one another because of the deep Christian faith they both share.
### Eliza's family hunted; Tom's life with St. Clare
During Eliza's escape, she meets up with her husband George Harris, who had run away previously. They decide to attempt to reach Canada, but are tracked by Tom Loker, a slave hunter hired by Mr. Haley. Eventually Loker and his men trap Eliza and her family, causing George to shoot him in the side. Worried that Loker may die, Eliza convinces George to bring the slave hunter to a nearby Quaker settlement for medical treatment.
Back in New Orleans, St. Clare debates slavery with his Northern cousin Ophelia who, while opposing slavery, is prejudiced against black people. St. Clare, however, believes he is not biased, even though he is a slave owner. In an attempt to show Ophelia that her views on blacks are wrong, St. Clare purchases Topsy, a young black slave, and asks Ophelia to educate her.
After Tom has lived with the St. Clares for two years, Eva grows very ill. Before she dies she experiences a vision of heaven, which she shares with the people around her. As a result of her death and vision, the other characters resolve to change their lives, Ophelia promising to throw off her personal prejudices against blacks, Topsy saying she will better herself, and St. Clare pledging to free Tom.
### Tom sold to Simon Legree
Before St. Clare can follow through on his pledge, he dies after being stabbed outside a tavern. His wife reneges on her late husband's vow and sells Tom at auction to a vicious plantation owner named Simon Legree. Tom is taken to rural Louisiana with other new slaves including Emmeline, whom Simon Legree has purchased to use as a sex slave.
Legree begins to hate Tom when Tom refuses Legree's order to whip his fellow slave. Legree beats Tom viciously and resolves to crush his new slave's faith in God. Despite Legree's cruelty, Tom refuses to stop reading his Bible and comforting the other slaves as best he can. While at the plantation, Tom meets Cassy, another slave whom Legree used as a sex slave. Cassy tells her story to Tom. She was previously separated from her son and daughter when they were sold. She became pregnant again but killed the child because she could not tolerate having another child separated from her.
Tom Loker, changed after being healed by the Quakers, returns to the story. He has helped George, Eliza, and Harry enter Canada from Lake Erie and become free. In Louisiana, Uncle Tom almost succumbs to hopelessness as his faith in God is tested by the hardships of the plantation. He has two visions, one of Jesus and one of Eva, which renew his resolve to remain a faithful Christian, even unto death. He encourages Cassy to escape, which she does, taking Emmeline with her. When Tom refuses to tell Legree where Cassy and Emmeline have gone, Legree orders his overseers to kill Tom. As Tom is dying, he forgives the overseers who savagely beat him. Humbled by the character of the man they have killed, both men become Christians. George Shelby, Arthur Shelby's son, arrives to buy Tom's freedom, but Tom dies shortly after they meet.
### Final section
On their boat ride to freedom, Cassy and Emmeline meet George Harris' sister Madame de Thoux and accompany her to Canada. Madame de Thoux and George Harris were separated in their childhood. Cassy discovers that Eliza is her long-lost daughter who was sold as a child. Now that their family is together again, they travel to France and eventually Liberia, the African nation created for former American slaves. George Shelby returns to the Kentucky farm, where after his father's death, he frees all his slaves. George Shelby urges them to remember Tom's sacrifice every time they look at his cabin. He decides to lead a pious Christian life just as Uncle Tom did.
## Major characters
- Uncle Tom, the title character, was initially seen as a noble, long-suffering Christian slave. In more recent years, his name has become an epithet directed towards African-Americans who are accused of selling out to whites. Stowe intended Tom to be a "noble hero" and a praiseworthy person. Throughout the book, far from allowing himself to be exploited, Tom stands up for his beliefs and refuses to betray friends and family.
- Eliza is a slave and personal maid to Mrs. Shelby, who escapes to the North with her five-year-old son Harry after he is sold to Mr. Haley. Her husband, George, eventually finds Eliza and Harry in Ohio and emigrates with them to Canada, then France, and finally Liberia. The character Eliza was inspired by an account given at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati by John Rankin to Stowe's husband Calvin, a professor at the school. According to Rankin, in February 1838, a young slave woman, Eliza Harris, had escaped across the frozen Ohio River to the town of Ripley with her child in her arms and stayed at his house on her way farther north.
- Evangeline St. Clare is the daughter of Augustine St. Clare. Eva enters the narrative when Uncle Tom is traveling via steamship to New Orleans to be sold, and he rescues the five- or six-year-old girl from drowning. Eva begs her father to buy Tom, and he becomes the head coachman at the St. Clare house. He spends most of his time with the angelic Eva. Eva often talks about love and forgiveness, convincing the dour slave girl Topsy that she deserves love. She even touches the heart of her Aunt Ophelia. Eventually Eva falls terminally ill. Before dying, she gives a lock of her hair to each of the slaves, telling them that they must become Christians so that they may see each other in Heaven. On her deathbed, she convinces her father to free Tom, but because of circumstances the promise never materializes.
- Simon Legree is a cruel slave owner—a Northerner by birth—whose name has become synonymous with greed and cruelty. He is arguably the novel's main antagonist. His goal is to demoralize Tom and break him of his religious faith; he eventually orders Tom whipped to death out of frustration for his slave's unbreakable belief in God. The novel reveals that, as a young man, he had abandoned his sickly mother for a life at sea and ignored her letter to see her one last time at her deathbed. He sexually exploits Cassy, who despises him, and later sets his designs on Emmeline. It is unclear if Legree is based on any actual individuals. Reports surfaced in the late 1800s that Stowe had in mind a wealthy cotton and sugar plantation owner named Meredith Calhoun, who settled on the Red River north of Alexandria, Louisiana. Rev. Josiah Henson, inspiration for the character of Uncle Tom, said that Legree was modeled after Bryce Lytton, "who broke my arm and maimed me for life."
## Literary themes and theories
### Major themes
Uncle Tom's Cabin is dominated by a single theme: the evil and immorality of slavery. While Stowe weaves other subthemes throughout her text, such as the moral authority of motherhood and the power of Christian love, she emphasizes the connections between these and the horrors of slavery. Stowe sometimes changed the story's voice so she could give a "homily" on the destructive nature of slavery (such as when a white woman on the steamboat carrying Tom further south states, "The most dreadful part of slavery, to my mind, is its outrages of feelings and affections—the separating of families, for example."). One way Stowe showed the evil of slavery was how this "peculiar institution" forcibly separated families from each other.
One of the subthemes presented in the novel is temperance. Stowe made it somewhat subtle and in some cases she wove it into events that would also support the dominant theme. One example of this is when Augustine St. Clare is killed, he attempted to stop a brawl between two inebriated men in a cafe and was stabbed. Another example is the death of Prue, who was whipped to death for being drunk on a consistent basis; however, her reasons for doing so is due to the loss of her baby. In the opening of the novel, the fates of Eliza and her son are being discussed between slave owners over wine. Considering that Stowe intended this to be a subtheme, this scene could foreshadow future events that put alcohol in a bad light.
Because Stowe saw motherhood as the "ethical and structural model for all of American life" and also believed that only women had the moral authority to save the United States from the demon of slavery, another major theme of Uncle Tom's Cabin is the moral power and sanctity of women. Through characters like Eliza, who escapes from slavery to save her young son (and eventually reunites her entire family), or Eva, who is seen as the "ideal Christian", Stowe shows how she believed women could save those around them from even the worst injustices. Though later critics have noted that Stowe's female characters are often domestic clichés instead of realistic women, Stowe's novel "reaffirmed the importance of women's influence" and helped pave the way for the women's rights movement in the following decades.
Stowe's puritanical religious beliefs show up in the novel's final, overarching theme—the exploration of the nature of Christian love and how she feels Christian theology is fundamentally incompatible with slavery. This theme is most evident when Tom urges St. Clare to "look away to Jesus" after the death of St. Clare's beloved daughter Eva. After Tom dies, George Shelby eulogizes Tom by saying, "What a thing it is to be a Christian." Because Christian themes play such a large role in Uncle Tom's Cabin—and because of Stowe's frequent use of direct authorial interjections on religion and faith—the novel often takes the "form of a sermon".
### Literary theories
Over the years scholars have postulated a number of theories about what Stowe was trying to say with the novel (aside from the major theme of condemning slavery). For example, as an ardent Christian and active abolitionist, Stowe placed many of her religious beliefs into the novel. Some scholars have stated that Stowe saw her novel as offering a solution to the moral and political dilemma that troubled many slavery opponents: whether engaging in prohibited behavior was justified in opposing evil. Was the use of violence to oppose the violence of slavery and the breaking of proslavery laws morally defensible? Which of Stowe's characters should be emulated, the passive Uncle Tom or the defiant George Harris? Stowe's solution was similar to Ralph Waldo Emerson's: God's will would be followed if each person sincerely examined his principles and acted on them.
Scholars have also seen the novel as expressing the values and ideas of the Free Will Movement. In this view, the character of George Harris embodies the principles of free labor, and the complex character of Ophelia represents those Northerners who condoned compromise with slavery. In contrast to Ophelia is Dinah, who operates on passion. During the course of the novel Ophelia is transformed, just as the Republican Party (three years later) proclaimed that the North must transform itself and stand up for its antislavery principles.
Feminist theory can also be seen at play in Stowe's book, with the novel as a critique of the patriarchal nature of slavery. For Stowe, blood relations rather than paternalistic relations between masters and slaves formed the basis of families. Moreover, Stowe viewed national solidarity as an extension of a person's family, thus feelings of nationality stemmed from possessing a shared race. Consequently, she advocated African colonization for freed slaves and not amalgamation into American society.
The book has also been seen as an attempt to redefine masculinity as a necessary step toward the abolition of slavery. In this view, abolitionists had begun to resist the vision of aggressive and dominant men that the conquest and colonization of the early 19th century had fostered. To change the notion of manhood so that men could oppose slavery without jeopardizing their self-image or their standing in society, some abolitionists drew on principles of women's suffrage and Christianity as well as passivism, and praised men for cooperation, compassion, and civic spirit. Others within the abolitionist movement argued for conventional, aggressive masculine action. All the men in Stowe's novel are representations of either one kind of man or the other.
## Style
Uncle Tom's Cabin is written in the sentimental and melodramatic style common to 19th-century sentimental novels and domestic fiction (also called women's fiction). These genres were the most popular novels of Stowe's time and were "written by, for, and about women" along with featuring a writing style that evoked a reader's sympathy and emotion. Uncle Tom's Cabin has been called a "representative" example of a sentimental novel.
The power in this type of writing can be seen in the reaction of contemporary readers. Georgiana May, a friend of Stowe's, wrote a letter to the author, saying: "I was up last night long after one o'clock, reading and finishing Uncle Tom's Cabin. I could not leave it any more than I could have left a dying child." Another reader is described as obsessing on the book at all hours and having considered renaming her daughter Eva. Evidently the death of Little Eva affected a lot of people at that time, because in 1852, 300 baby girls in Boston alone were given that name.
Despite this positive reaction from readers, for decades literary critics dismissed the style found in Uncle Tom's Cabin and other sentimental novels because these books were written by women and so prominently featured what one critic called "women's sloppy emotions". Another literary critic said that had the novel not been about slavery, "it would be just another sentimental novel", and another described the book as "primarily a derivative piece of hack work". In The Literary History of the United States, George F. Whicher called Uncle Tom's Cabin "Sunday-school fiction", full of "broadly conceived melodrama, humor, and pathos".
In 1985 Jane Tompkins expressed a different view with her famous defense of the book in "Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Politics of Literary History." Tompkins praised the style so many other critics had dismissed, writing that sentimental novels showed how women's emotions had the power to change the world for the better. She also said that the popular domestic novels of the 19th century, including Uncle Tom's Cabin, were remarkable for their "intellectual complexity, ambition, and resourcefulness"; and that Uncle Tom's Cabin offers a "critique of American society far more devastating than any delivered by better-known critics such as Hawthorne and Melville."
## Reactions to the novel
Uncle Tom's Cabin has exerted an influence equaled by few other novels in history. Upon publication, Uncle Tom's Cabin ignited a firestorm of protest from defenders of slavery (who created a number of books in response to the novel) while the book elicited praise from abolitionists. The novel is considered an influential "landmark" of protest literature.
### Contemporary reaction in United States and around the world
Uncle Tom's Cabin had an "incalculable" impact on the 19th-century world and captured the imagination of many Americans. In a likely apocryphal story that alludes to the novel's impact, when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862 he supposedly commented, "So this is the little lady who started this great war." Historians are undecided if Lincoln actually said this line, and in a letter that Stowe wrote to her husband a few hours after meeting with Lincoln no mention of this comment was made. Many writers have also credited the novel with focusing Northern anger at the injustices of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law and helping to fuel the abolitionist movement. Union general and politician James Baird Weaver said that the book convinced him to become active in the abolitionist movement.
Frederick Douglass was "convinced both of the social uses of the novel and of Stowe's humanitarianism" and heavily promoted the novel in his newspaper during the book's initial release. Though Douglass said Uncle Tom's Cabin was "a work of marvelous depth and power," he also published criticism of the novel, most prominently by Martin Delany. In a series of letters in the paper, Delany accused Stowe of "borrowing (and thus profiting) from the work of black writers to compose her novel" and chastised Stowe for her "apparent support of black colonization to Africa." " Martin was "one of the most out-spoken black critics" of Uncle Tom's Cabin at the time and later wrote Blake; or the Huts of America, a novel where an African American "chooses violent rebellion over Tom's resignation."
White people in the American South were outraged at the novel's release, with the book also roundly criticized by slavery supporters. Southern novelist William Gilmore Simms declared the work utterly false while also calling it slanderous. Reactions ranged from a bookseller in Mobile, Alabama, being forced to leave town for selling the novel to threatening letters sent to Stowe (including a package containing a slave's severed ear). Many Southern writers, like Simms, soon wrote their own books in opposition to Stowe's novel.
Some critics highlighted Stowe's paucity of life-experience relating to Southern life, saying that it led her to create inaccurate descriptions of the region. For instance, she had never been to a Southern plantation. Stowe always said she based the characters of her book on stories she was told by runaway slaves in Cincinnati. It is reported that "She observed firsthand several incidents which galvanized her to write [the] famous anti-slavery novel. Scenes she observed on the Ohio River, including seeing a husband and wife being sold apart, as well as newspaper and magazine accounts and interviews, contributed material to the emerging plot."
In response to these criticisms, in 1853 Stowe published A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, an attempt to document the veracity of the novel's depiction of slavery. In the book, Stowe discusses each of the major characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin and cites "real life equivalents" to them while also mounting a more "aggressive attack on slavery in the South than the novel itself had". Like the novel, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin was a best-seller, but although Stowe claimed A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin documented her previously consulted sources, she actually read many of the cited works only after the publication of her novel.
Uncle Tom's Cabin also created great interest in the United Kingdom. The first London edition appeared in May 1852 and sold 200,000 copies. Some of this interest was because of British antipathy to America. As one prominent writer explained, "The evil passions which Uncle Tom gratified in England were not hatred or vengeance [of slavery], but national jealousy and national vanity. We have long been smarting under the conceit of America—we are tired of hearing her boast that she is the freest and the most enlightened country that the world has ever seen. Our clergy hate her voluntary system—our Tories hate her democrats—our Whigs hate her parvenus—our Radicals hate her litigiousness, her insolence, and her ambition. All parties hailed Mrs. Stowe as a revolter from the enemy." Charles Francis Adams, the American minister to Britain during the war, argued later that "Uncle Tom's Cabin; or Life among the Lowly, published in 1852, exercised, largely from fortuitous circumstances, a more immediate, considerable and dramatic world-influence than any other book ever printed."
Stowe sent a copy of the book to Charles Dickens, who wrote her in response: "I have read your book with the deepest interest and sympathy, and admire, more than I can express to you, both the generous feeling which inspired it, and the admirable power with which it is executed." The historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote in 1852 that "it is the most valuable addition that America has made to English literature."
### 20th century and modern criticism
In the 20th century, a number of writers attacked Uncle Tom's Cabin not only for the stereotypes the novel had created about African-Americans but also because of "the utter disdain of the Tom character by the black community". These writers included Richard Wright with his collection Uncle Tom's Children (1938) and Chester Himes with his 1943 short story "Heaven Has Changed". Ralph Ellison also critiqued the book with his 1952 novel Invisible Man, with Ellison figuratively killing Uncle Tom in the opening chapter.
In 1945 James Baldwin published his influential and infamous critical essay "Everbody's Protest Novel". In the essay, Baldwin described Uncle Tom's Cabin as "a bad novel, having, in its self-righteousness, virtuous sentimentality". He argued that the novel lacked psychological depth, and that Stowe, "was not so much a novelist as an impassioned pamphleteer". Edward Rothstein has claimed that Baldwin missed the point and that the purpose of the novel was "to treat slavery not as a political issue but as an individually human one – and ultimately a challenge to Christianity itself."
George Orwell in his essay "Good Bad Books", first published in Tribune in November 1945, claims that "perhaps the supreme example of the 'good bad' book is Uncle Tom's Cabin. It is an unintentionally ludicrous book, full of preposterous melodramatic incidents; it is also deeply moving and essentially true; it is hard to say which quality outweighs the other." But he concludes "I would back Uncle Tom's Cabin to outlive the complete works of Virginia Woolf or George Moore, though I know of no strictly literary test which would show where the superiority lies."
The negative associations related to Uncle Tom's Cabin, in particular how the novel and associated plays created and popularized racial stereotypes, have to some extent obscured the book's historical impact as a "vital antislavery tool". After the turn of the millennium, scholars such as Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Hollis Robbins have re-examined Uncle Tom's Cabin in what has been called a "serious attempt to resurrect it as both a central document in American race relations and a significant moral and political exploration of the character of those relations."
### Literary significance
Generally recognized as the first best-selling novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin greatly influenced development of not only American literature but also protest literature in general. Later books that owe a large debt to Uncle Tom's Cabin include The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.
Despite this undisputed significance, Uncle Tom's Cabin has been called "a blend of children's fable and propaganda". The novel has also been dismissed by several literary critics as "merely a sentimental novel"; critic George Whicher stated in his Literary History of the United States that "Nothing attributable to Mrs. Stowe or her handiwork can account for the novel's enormous vogue; its author's resources as a purveyor of Sunday-school fiction were not remarkable. She had at most a ready command of broadly conceived melodrama, humor, and pathos, and of these popular sentiments she compounded her book."
Other critics, though, have praised the novel. Edmund Wilson stated that "To expose oneself in maturity to Uncle Tom's Cabin may therefore prove a startling experience. It is a much more impressive work than one has ever been allowed to suspect." Jane Tompkins stated that the novel is one of the classics of American literature and wonders if many literary critics dismiss the book because it was simply too popular during its day.
## Creation and popularization of stereotypes
Many modern scholars and readers have criticized the book for condescending racist descriptions of the black characters' appearances, speech, and behavior, as well as the passive nature of Uncle Tom in accepting his fate. The novel's creation and use of common stereotypes about African Americans is significant because Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel in the world during the 19th century. As a result, the book (along with illustrations from the book and associated stage productions) played a major role in perpetuating and solidifying such stereotypes into the American psyche. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Black Power and Black Arts Movements attacked the novel, claiming that the character of Uncle Tom engaged in "race betrayal", and that Tom made slaves out to be worse than slave owners.
Among the stereotypes of blacks in Uncle Tom's Cabin are the "happy darky" (in the lazy, carefree character of Sam); the light-skinned tragic mulatto as a sex object (in the characters of Eliza, Cassy, and Emmeline); the affectionate, dark-skinned female mammy (through several characters, including Mammy, a cook at the St. Clare plantation); the pickaninny stereotype of black children (in the character of Topsy); the Uncle Tom, an African American who is too eager to please white people. Stowe intended Tom to be a "noble hero" and a Christ-like figure who, like Jesus at his crucifixion, forgives the people responsible for his death. The false stereotype of Tom as a "subservient fool who bows down to the white man", and the resulting derogatory term "Uncle Tom", resulted from staged "Tom Shows", which sometimes replaced Tom's grim death with an upbeat ending where Tom causes his oppressors to see the error of their ways, and they all reconcile happily. Stowe had no control over these shows and their alteration of her story.
## Anti-Tom literature
In response to Uncle Tom's Cabin, writers in the Southern United States produced a number of books to rebut Stowe's novel. This so-called Anti-Tom literature generally took a pro-slavery viewpoint, arguing that the issues of slavery as depicted in Stowe's book were overblown and incorrect. The novels in this genre tended to feature a benign white patriarchal master and a pure wife, both of whom presided over childlike slaves in a benevolent extended family style plantation. The novels either implied or directly stated that African Americans were a childlike people unable to live their lives without being directly overseen by white people.
Among the most famous anti-Tom books are The Sword and the Distaff by William Gilmore Simms, Aunt Phillis's Cabin by Mary Henderson Eastman, and The Planter's Northern Bride by Caroline Lee Hentz, with the last author having been a close personal friend of Stowe's when the two lived in Cincinnati. Simms' book was published a few months after Stowe's novel, and it contains a number of sections and discussions disputing Stowe's book and her view of slavery. Hentz's 1854 novel, widely read at the time but now largely forgotten, offers a defense of slavery as seen through the eyes of a Northern woman—the daughter of an abolitionist, no less—who marries a Southern slave owner.
In the decade between the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the start of the American Civil War, between twenty and thirty anti-Tom books were published (although others continued to be published after the war, including The Leopard's Spots in 1902 by "professional racist" Thomas Dixon Jr.). More than half of these anti-Tom books were written by white women, Simms commenting at one point about the "Seemingly poetic justice of having the Northern woman (Stowe) answered by a Southern woman."
## Dramatic adaptations
### Plays and Tom shows
Even though Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century, far more Americans of that time saw the story as a stage play or musical than read the book. Historian Eric Lott estimated that "for every one of the three hundred thousand who bought the novel in its first year, many more eventually saw the play." In 1902, it was reported that by a quarter million of these presentations had already been performed in the United States.
Given the lax copyright laws of the time, stage plays based on Uncle Tom's Cabin—"Tom shows"—began to appear while the novel was still being serialized. Stowe refused to authorize dramatization of her work because of her distrust of drama (although she did eventually go to see George L. Aiken's version and, according to Francis Underwood, was "delighted" by Caroline Howard's portrayal of Topsy). Aiken's stage production was the most popular play in the U.S. and England for 75 years. Stowe's refusal to authorize a particular dramatic version left the field clear for any number of adaptations, some launched for (various) political reasons and others as simply commercial theatrical ventures.
No international copyright laws existed at the time. The book and plays were translated into several languages; Stowe received no money, which could have meant as much as "three-fourths of her just and legitimate wages".
All the Tom shows appear to have incorporated elements of melodrama and blackface minstrelsy. These plays varied tremendously in their politics—some faithfully reflected Stowe's sentimentalized antislavery politics, while others were more moderate, or even pro-slavery. Many of the productions featured demeaning racial caricatures of black people; some productions also featured songs by Stephen Foster (including "My Old Kentucky Home", "Old Folks at Home", and "Massa's in the Cold Ground"). The best-known Tom shows were those of George Aiken and H.J. Conway.
The many stage variants of Uncle Tom's Cabin "dominated northern popular culture... for several years" during the 19th century, and the plays were still being performed in the early 20th century.
### Films
Uncle Tom's Cabin has been adapted several times as a film. Most of these movies were created during the silent film era (Uncle Tom's Cabin was the most-filmed book of that time period). Because of the continuing popularity of both the book and "Tom" shows, audiences were already familiar with the characters and the plot, making it easier for the film to be understood without spoken words.
The first film version of Uncle Tom's Cabin was one of the earliest full-length movies (although full-length at that time meant between 10 and 14 minutes). This 1903 film, directed by Edwin S. Porter, used white actors in blackface in the major roles and black performers only as extras. This version was evidently similar to many of the "Tom Shows" of earlier decades and featured several stereotypes about blacks (such as having the slaves dance in almost any context, including at a slave auction).
In 1910, a three-reel Vitagraph Company of America production was directed by J. Stuart Blackton and adapted by Eugene Mullin. According to The Dramatic Mirror, this film was "a decided innovation" in motion pictures and "the first time an American company" released a dramatic film in three reels. Until then, full-length movies of the time were 15 minutes long and contained only one reel of film. The movie starred Florence Turner, Mary Fuller, Edwin R. Phillips, Flora Finch, Genevieve Tobin and Carlyle Blackwell, Sr.
At least four more movie adaptations were created in the next two decades. The last silent film version was released in 1927. Directed by Harry A. Pollard (who played Uncle Tom in a 1913 release of Uncle Tom's Cabin), this two-hour movie was more than a year in production and was the third most expensive picture of the silent era (at a cost of \$1.8 million). The black actor Charles Gilpin was originally cast in the title role, but he was fired after the studio decided his "portrayal was too aggressive".
For several decades after the end of the silent film era, the subject matter of Stowe's novel was judged too sensitive for further film interpretation. In 1946, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer considered filming the story but ceased production after protests led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Film versions were created overseas in the following decades, including a 1965 German-language version and a TV soap opera in Brazil called A Cabana do Pai Tomás, which ran for 205 episodes from July 1969 to March 1970. The final film version was a television broadcast in 1987, directed by Stan Lathan and adapted by John Gay. It starred Avery Brooks, Phylicia Rashad, Edward Woodward, Jenny Lewis, Samuel L. Jackson and Endyia Kinney.
In addition to film adaptations, versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin have been produced in other formats, including a number of animated cartoons. Uncle Tom's Cabin also influenced movies, including The Birth of a Nation. This controversial 1915 film set the dramatic climax in a slave cabin similar to that of Uncle Tom, where several white Southerners unite with their former enemy (Yankee soldiers) to defend, according to the film's caption, their "Aryan birthright". According to scholars, this reuse of such a familiar image of a slave cabin would have resonated with, and been understood by, audiences of the time.
## See also
- History of slavery in the United States
- Origins of the American Civil War
- Ramona, an 1884 novel that attempted to do for Native Americans in California what Uncle Tom's Cabin had done for African Americans
- Timeline of the civil rights movement
|
26,618,026 |
Adenanthos cuneatus
| 1,168,421,783 |
Shrub of the family Proteaceae native to the south coast of Western Australia
|
[
"Adenanthos",
"Endemic flora of Southwest Australia",
"Eudicots of Western Australia",
"Garden plants of Australia",
"Plants described in 1805"
] |
Adenanthos cuneatus, also known as coastal jugflower, flame bush, bridle bush and sweat bush, is a shrub of the family Proteaceae, native to the south coast of Western Australia. The French naturalist Jacques Labillardière originally described it in 1805. Within the genus Adenanthos, it lies in the section Adenanthos and is most closely related to A. stictus. A. cuneatus has hybridized with four other species of Adenanthos. Growing to 2 m (6 ft 7 in) high and wide, it is erect to prostrate in habit, with wedge-shaped lobed leaves covered in fine silvery hair. The single red flowers are insignificant, and appear all year, though especially in late spring. The reddish new growth occurs over the summer.
It is sensitive to Phytophthora cinnamomi dieback, hence requiring a sandy soil and good drainage to grow in cultivation, its natural habitat of sandy soils in heathland being an example. Its pollinators include bees, honey possum, silvereye and honeyeaters, particularly the western spinebill. A. cuneatus is grown in gardens in Australia and the western United States, and a dwarf and prostrate form are commercially available.
## Description
Adenanthos cuneatus grows as an erect, spreading or prostrate shrub to 2 m (6 ft 7 in) high and wide. It has a woody base, known as a lignotuber, from which it can resprout after bushfire. The wedge-shaped (cuneate) leaves are on short petioles, and are 2 cm (0.8 in) long and 1–1.5 cm (0.4–0.6 in) wide, with 3 to 5 (and occasionally up to 7) rounded 'teeth' or lobes at the ends. New growth is red and slightly translucent. It glows bright red against the light, especially when the sun is low in the sky. New growth is mainly seen in summer, and the leaves in general are covered with fine, silvery hair. Occurring throughout the year but more often from August to November, the insignificant single flowers are a dull red in colour and measure around 4 cm (1.6 in) long. The pollen is triangular in shape and measures 31–44 μm (0.0012–0.0017 in) in length, averaging around 34 μm (0.0013 in).
The species is similar in many ways to its close relative A. stictus. The most obvious difference is in habit: the multi-stemmed, lignotuberous A. cuneatus rarely grows over 2 m (6 ft 7 in) in height, whereas A. stictus is a taller single-stemmed non-lignotuberous shrub that commonly reaches 5 m (16 ft 5 in) in height. Leaves are similar, but the lobes at the leaf apex are regular and crenate (rounded) in A. cuneatus, but irregular and dentate (toothed) in A. stictus. Also, new growth does not have a red flush in A. stictus, and juvenile leaves of A. stictus are usually much larger than adult leaves, a difference not seen in A. cuneatus. The flowers of the two species are very similar, differing only subtly in dimension, colour and indumentum.
## Taxonomy
### Discovery and naming
Although the precise time and location of its discovery are unknown, Jacques Labillardière, botanist to an expedition under Bruni d'Entrecasteaux, which anchored in Esperance Bay on the south coast of Western Australia on 9 December 1792, most likely collected the first known botanical specimen of Adenanthos cuneatus on 16 December while searching the area between Observatory Point and Pink Lake for the zoologist Claude Riche, who had gone ashore two days earlier and failed to return. Following an unsuccessful search the following day, several senior members of the expedition were convinced that Riche must have perished of thirst or at the hands of the Australian Aborigines and counselled d'Entrecasteaux to sail without him. However, Labillardière convinced d'Entrecasteaux to search for another day, and was rewarded not only with the recovery of Riche, but also with the collection of several highly significant botanical specimens, including the first specimens of Anigozanthos (Kangaroo Paw) and Nuytsia floribunda (West Australian Christmas Tree) and, as aforementioned, A. cuneatus.
Thirteen years passed before Labillardière published a formal description of A. cuneatus, and in the meantime several further collections were made: Scottish botanist Robert Brown collected a specimen on 30 December 1801, during the visit of HMS Investigator to King George Sound; and, fourteen months later, Jean-Baptiste Leschenault de La Tour, botanist to Nicolas Baudin's voyage of exploration, and "gardener's boy" Antoine Guichenot collected more specimens therein. The official account of Baudin's expedition contain notes from Leschenault on vegetation:
> "Sur les bords de la mer, croissent, en grande abondance, l'adenanthos cuneata, l'adenanthos sericea au feuillage velouté, et une espèce du même genre dont les feuilles sont arrondies."
>
> ("On the seashore, grows, in great abundance, Adenanthos cuneata, the velvety-leaved Adenanthos sericea, and a species of the same genus with rounded leaves.")
Labillardière eventually published the genus Adenanthos, along with A. cuneatus and two other species, in his 1805 Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen. He chose the specific name cuneata in reference to the leaves of this species, which are cuneate (triangular). This name has feminine gender, consistent with the gender assigned by Labillardière to the genus. He did not designate which of the three published species was to serve as the type species of Adenanthos, but Irish botanist E. Charles Nelson has since chosen A. cuneatus as lectotype for the genus, since the holotype of A. cuneatus bears an annotation showing the derivation of the genus name, and because Labillardière's description of it is the most detailed of the three, and is referred to by the other descriptions.
### Synonymy
In 1809, Richard Salisbury, writing under Joseph Knight's name in the controversial On the cultivation of the plants belonging to the natural order of Proteeae, published the name Adenanthes [sic] flabellifolia, listing A. cuneata as a synonym. As no type specimen was given, and no specimen annotated by Knight could be found, this was treated as a nomenclatural synonym of A. cuneata and was therefore rejected on the principle of priority.
Also synonymised with this species is Adenanthos crenata, published by Carl Ludwig Willdenow's in Kurt Polycarp Joachim Sprengel's 1825 16th edition of Systema Vegetabilium. Willdenow published both A. cuneata and A. crenata, giving them different descriptions but designating the same type specimen for both. Thus A. crenata was rejected under the principle of priority, and is now regarded as a nomenclatural synonym of A. cuneatus.
### Infrageneric placement
In 1870, George Bentham published the first infrageneric arrangement of Adenanthos in Volume 5 of his landmark "Flora Australiensis". He divided the genus into two sections, placing A. cuneata in A. sect. Stenolaema because its perianth tube is straight and not swollen above the middle. This arrangement still stands today, though A. sect. Stenolaema is now renamed to the autonym A. sect. Adenanthos.
A phenetic analysis of the genus undertaken by Nelson in 1975 yielded results in which A. cuneatus was grouped with A. stictus. This pairing was then neighbour to a larger group that included A. forrestii, A. eyrei, A. cacomorphus, A. ileticos, and several hybrid and unusual forms of A. cuneatus. Nelson's analysis supported Bentham's sections, and so they were retained when Nelson published a taxonomic revision of the genus in 1978. He further subdivided A. sect. Adenanthos into two subsections, with A. cuneata placed into A. subsect. Adenanthos for reasons including the length of its perianth, but Nelson discarded his own subsections in his 1995 treatment of Adenanthos, for the Flora of Australia series of monographs. By this time, the ICBN had issued a ruling that all genera ending in -anthos must be treated as having masculine gender; thus the specific epithet became cuneatus.
The placement of A. cuneatus in Nelson's arrangement of Adenanthos may be summarised as follows:
Adenanthos
: A. sect. Eurylaema (4 species)
: A. sect. Adenanthos
: : A. drummondii
: : A. dobagii
: : A. apiculatus
: : A. linearis
: : A. pungens (2 subspecies)
: : A. gracilipes
: : A. venosus
: : A. dobsonii
: : A. glabrescens (2 subspecies)
: : A. ellipticus
: : A. cuneatus
: : A. stictus
: : A. ileticos
: : A. forrestii
: : A. eyrei
: : A. cacomorphus
: : A. flavidiflorus
: : A. argyreus
: : A. macropodianus
: : A. terminalis
: : A. sericeus (2 subspecies)
: : A. × cunninghamii
: : A. oreophilus
: : A. cygnorum (2 subspecies)
: : A. meisneri
: : A. velutinus
: : A. filifolius
: : A. labillardierei
: : A. acanthophyllus
### Hybrids
Adenanthos cuneatus apparently forms hybrids with other Adenanthos species quite readily, as four putative natural hybrids have been reported:
- A. × cunninghamii (Albany Woollybush), a hybrid between A. cuneatus and A. sericeus, was first collected in 1827, and published as A. cunninghamii in 1845. Other than some dubious collections in the 1830s and 1840s, no further sightings are known to have been made until 1973, when Nelson rediscovered it. At the time it was regarded as a distinct species, but by 1995 it was thought to be a hybrid, and this was confirmed by genetic analysis in 2002. In appearance it is very similar to A. sericeus, but its leaf segments are flat rather than cylindrical.
- A single plant discovered by Nelson near Israelite Bay, where both putative parents are found, is regarded as a hybrid between A. cuneatus and A. dobsonii. Leaves are mostly triangular like those of A. cuneatus, but whereas A. cuneatus leaves are mostly five-lobed, the putative hybrid usually has three lobes, with the occasional leaf being entire like those of A. dobsonii (though A. cuneatis itself occasionally bears entire leaves). Leaves of the putative hybrid lack the thick indumentum of A. cuneatus, being bright green with a sparse indumentum like that of A. dobsonii. Flower colour is like that of A. cuneatus but the style lacks an indumentum, like A. dobsonii.
- Two plants found near Twilight Cove are regarded as hybrids between A. cuneatus and A. forrestii, the only two Adenanthos species to occur in the area. One was discovered by Nelson in 1972, the other by Alex George in 1974. They are about 5 km apart, and differ somewhat. The leaves are triangular and flat like those of A. cuneatus, but the leaves of mature shoots are very long and narrow, and the leaves of younger shoots are deeply lobed.
- In his 1995 revision, Nelson refers to putative hybrids with A. dobsonii and A. apiculatus, citing the 1978 paper in which he published putative hybrids with A. dobsonii and A. forrestii. It is unclear whether the reference to A. apiculatus is an error or a fourth putative hybrid.
### Common names
This species has several common names, some highly localised. Two names allude to its consumption by horses; bridle bush, a name used east of Esperance, refers to the fact that horses favour it as fodder; and sweat bush, used around Hopetoun, derived from the claim that horses break out in sweat after consuming young growth. The common name of flame bush derives from the brilliant red new growth. It is also known as coastal jugflower. Nelson also records the use of the names Templetonia and native temp, but ridicules them as obvious errors.
## Distribution and habitat
The most widely distributed Adenanthos species of the south coast, A. cuneatus is common and locally abundant between King George Sound and Israelite Bay, along the coast and up to 40 km (25 mi) inland, with isolated populations extending west to Walpole and the Stirling Range, and as far east of Israelite Bay as Twilight Cove.
This species is restricted to siliceous sandplain soils and will not grow in calcareous soils such as the limestone plains of the Nullarbor, or even siliceous dunes with limestone at little depth. This restriction explains the disjunctions east of Israelite Bay: the species occurs only in those few locations where the existence of cliff-top dunes of deep siliceous sand provide suitable habitat. Provided the soil is siliceous and fairly dry, A. cuneatus tolerates a range of edaphic conditions: it grows in both lateritic sand and sands of marine origin, and it tolerates pH levels ranging from 3.8 to 6.6.
Consistent with these edaphic preferences, A. cuneatus is a frequent and characteristic member of the kwongan heathlands commonly found on the sandplains of Southwest Australia. The climate in its range is mediterranean, with annual rainfall from 275 to 1,000 mm (10.8 to 39.4 in).
## Ecology
Colletid bees of the genus Leioproctus visit Adenanthos cuneatus flowers. A 1978 field study conducted around Albany found the honey possum (Tarsipes rostratus) occasionally visited Adenanthos cuneatus, while the western spinebill much preferred the species to other flowers. A 1980 field study at Cheyne beach showed that the New Holland honeyeater and white-cheeked honeyeater pollinate it A 1985–86 field study in the Fitzgerald River National Park found that the nectar-feeding honey possum occasionally eats it. The silvereye (Zosterops lateralis) feeds on nectar from the flowers, and has also been observed taking dew-drops from leaves early in the morning.
Adenanthos cuneatus is known to be susceptible to Phytophthora cinnamomi dieback, but reports on the degree of susceptibility vary from low to high. A study of Banksia attenuata woodland 400 km (249 mi) southeast of Perth across 16 years, and following a wave of P. cinnamomi infestation, showed that A. cuneatus populations were not significantly reduced in diseased areas. Phosphite (used to combat dieback) has some toxic effects in A. cuneatus, with some necrosis of leaf tips, but the shrub uptakes little of the compound when compared with other shrubs. Specimens in coastal dune vegetation showed some sensitivity to the fungus Armillaria luteobubalina, with between a quarter and a half of plants exposed succumbing to the pathogen.
## Cultivation
Adenanthos cuneatus was taken to Great Britain in 1824, and has been grown in cultivation in Australia and the western United States. Its attractive bronzed or reddish foliage is its main horticultural feature, along with its ability to attract birds to the garden. It requires a well-drained position to do well, but will grow in full sun or semi-shade, and tolerates both sand and gravelly soils. George Lullfitz, a Western Australian nurseryman, recommends growing it as a rambling ground cover in front of other shrubs, or in a rockery.
The following cultivars exist:
- A. "Coral Drift" is a compact form in cultivation since at least the 1990s. It is 50–70 cm (19.7–27.6 in) tall and 1–1.5 m (3.3–4.9 ft) wide. The grey foliage has pinkish purple new growth.
- A. "Coral Carpet" is a prostrate form which peaks at around 20 cm (7.9 in) high and spreads to 1.5 m (4.9 ft) across. The new foliage is a pinkish purple. A chance seedling from 'Coral Drift', it was originally developed by George Lullfitz of Lullfitz Nursery in Wanneroo. It became available to the public in 2005, and has been registered successfully under Plant Breeders' Rights.
|
2,435,489 |
Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916
| 1,173,493,128 |
Shark attacks in the US
|
[
"1916 in New Jersey",
"1916 natural disasters in the United States",
"Accidental deaths in New Jersey",
"Deaths due to animal attacks in the United States",
"Deaths due to shark attacks",
"Individual wild animals",
"July 1916 events",
"Monmouth County, New Jersey",
"Natural disasters in New Jersey",
"Ocean County, New Jersey",
"Shark attacks"
] |
The Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 were a series of shark attacks along the coast of New Jersey, in the United States, between July 1 and 12, 1916, in which four people were killed and one critically injured. The incidents occurred during a deadly summer heat wave and polio epidemic in the United States that drove thousands of people to the seaside resorts of the Jersey Shore. Since 1916, scholars have debated which shark species was responsible and the number of animals involved, with the great white shark and the bull shark most frequently cited.
Personal and national reaction to the fatalities involved a wave of panic that led to shark hunts aimed at eradicating the population of "man-eating" sharks and protecting the economies of New Jersey's seaside communities. Resort towns enclosed their public beaches with steel nets to protect swimmers. Scientific knowledge about sharks before 1916 was based on conjecture and speculation. The attacks forced ichthyologists to reassess common beliefs about the abilities of sharks and the nature of shark attacks.
The Jersey Shore attacks immediately entered into American popular culture, where sharks became caricatures in editorial cartoons representing danger.
The attacks became the subject of documentaries for the History Channel, National Geographic Channel, and Discovery Channel, which aired 12 Days of Terror (2004) and the Shark Week episode Blood in the Water (2009).
## Incidents and victims
Between July 1 and 12, 1916, five people were attacked along the coast of New Jersey by sharks; only one of the victims survived. The first major attack occurred on Saturday, July 1 at Beach Haven, a resort town established on Long Beach Island off the southern coast of New Jersey. Charles Epting Vansant, 28, of Philadelphia, was on vacation at the Engleside Hotel with his family. Before dinner, Vansant decided to take a quick swim in the Atlantic with a Chesapeake Bay Retriever that was playing on the beach. Shortly after entering the water, Vansant began shouting. Bathers believed he was calling to the dog, but a shark was actually biting Vansant's legs. He was rescued by lifeguard Alexander Ott and bystander Sheridan Taylor, who claimed the shark followed him to shore as they pulled the bleeding Vansant from the water. Vansant's left thigh was stripped of its flesh; he bled to death on the manager's desk of the Engleside Hotel at 6:45 PM.
Despite the Vansant attack, beaches along the Jersey Shore remained open. Sightings of large sharks swimming off the coast of New Jersey were reported by sea captains entering the ports of Newark and New York City but were dismissed. The second major attack occurred on Thursday, July 6, 1916, at the resort town of Spring Lake, New Jersey, 45 miles (72 km) north of Beach Haven. The victim was Charles Bruder, 27, a Swiss bell captain at the Essex & Sussex Hotel. Bruder was attacked while swimming 130 yards (120 m) from shore. A shark bit him in the abdomen and severed his legs; Bruder's blood turned the water red. After hearing screams, a woman notified two lifeguards that a canoe with a red hull had capsized and was floating just at the water's surface. Lifeguards Chris Anderson and George White rowed to Bruder in a lifeboat and realized he had been bitten by a shark. They pulled him from the water, but he bled to death on the way to shore. According to The New York Times, "women [were] panic-stricken [and fainted] as [Bruder's] mutilated body ... [was] brought ashore." Guests and workers at the Essex & Sussex and neighboring hotels raised money for Bruder's mother in Switzerland.
The next three attacks took place in Matawan Creek near the town of Keyport on Wednesday, July 12. Located 30 miles (48 km) north of Spring Lake and inland of Raritan Bay, Matawan resembled a Midwestern town rather than an Atlantic beach resort. Matawan's location made it an unlikely site for interactions between sharks and humans. When Thomas Cottrell, a sea captain and Matawan resident, spotted an 8-foot-long (2.4 m) shark in the creek, the town dismissed him. Around 2:00 PM a group of local boys, including young Lester Stilwell, 11, were playing in the creek together. One of the boys had brought along his pet dog, which was swimming with them as well. At an area called "Wyckoff Dock" they saw what appeared to be an "old, black weather-beaten board or a weathered log." A dorsal fin appeared in the water and the boys realized it was a shark. Before Stilwell could climb from the creek, the shark pulled him underwater.
The boys ran to town for help, and several men, including local businessman Watson Stanley Fisher, 24, came to investigate. Fisher and others dived into the creek to find Stilwell, believing him to have suffered a seizure. After locating the boy's body and attempting to return to shore, Fisher was also bitten by the shark in front of the townspeople, losing Stilwell in the process. His right thigh was severely injured and he bled to death at Monmouth Memorial Hospital in Long Branch at 5:30 PM. Stilwell's body was recovered 150 feet (46 m) upstream from the Wyckoff dock on July 14.
The fifth and final victim, Joseph Dunn, 14, of New York City was attacked a half-mile from the Wyckoff dock nearly 30 minutes after the fatal attacks on Stilwell and Fisher. The shark bit his left leg, stripping it of flesh, but Dunn was rescued by his brother and friend after a vicious tug-of-war battle with the shark. Dunn told the press that he felt his leg going down the shark's throat, "I believe it would have swallowed me." Dunn was taken to Saint Peter's University Hospital in New Brunswick; he recovered from the bite and was released on September 15, 1916.
## Reaction
As the national media descended on Beach Haven, Spring Lake, and Matawan, the Jersey Shore attacks started a shark panic. According to Capuzzo, this panic was "unrivaled in American history", "sweeping along the coasts of New York and New Jersey and spreading by telephone and wireless, letter and postcard."
At first, after the Beach Haven incident, scientists and the press only reluctantly blamed the death of Charles Vansant on a shark. The New York Times reported that Vansant "was badly bitten in the surf ... by a fish, presumably a shark." Still, State Fish Commissioner of Pennsylvania and former director of the Philadelphia Aquarium James M. Meehan asserted in the Philadelphia Public Ledger that the shark was preying on the dog and had bitten Vansant by mistake. He specifically de-emphasized the threat sharks posed to humans:
> Despite the death of Charles Vansant and the report [of] two sharks having been caught in that vicinity recently, I do not believe there is any reason why people should hesitate to go in swimming at the beaches for fear of man-eaters. The information in regard to the sharks is indefinite and I hardly believe that Vansant was bitten by a man-eater. Vansant was in the surf playing with a dog and it may be that a small shark had drifted in at high water, and was marooned by the tide. Being unable to move quickly and without food, he had come in to bite the dog and snapped at the man in passing.
The media's response to the second attack was more sensational. Major American newspapers such as the Boston Herald, Chicago Sun-Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle placed the story on the front page. The New York Times' headline read, "Shark Kills Bather Off Jersey Beach". The growing panic cost New Jersey resort owners an estimated \$250,000 (\$ in ) in lost tourism, and sun bathing declined by 75 percent in some areas.
A press conference was convened on July 8, 1916, at the American Museum of Natural History, with scientists Frederic Augustus Lucas, John Treadwell Nichols, and Robert Cushman Murphy as panelists. To calm the growing panic, the three men stressed that a third run-in with a shark was unlikely, although they were admittedly surprised that sharks bit anyone at all. Nevertheless, Nichols—the only ichthyologist in the trio—warned swimmers to stay close to shore and to take advantage of the netted bathing areas installed at public beaches after the first attack.
Shark sightings increased along the Mid-Atlantic Coast following the attacks. On July 8, armed motorboats patrolling the beach at Spring Creek chased an animal they thought to be a shark, and Asbury Park's Asbury Avenue Beach was closed after lifeguard Benjamin Everingham claimed to have beaten off a 12-foot-long (4 m) shark with an oar. Sharks were spotted near Bayonne, New Jersey; Rocky Point, New York; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Jacksonville, Florida; and Mobile, Alabama, and a columnist from Field & Stream captured a sandbar shark in the surf at Beach Haven. Actress Gertrude Hoffmann was swimming at the Coney Island beach shortly after the Matawan fatalities when she claimed to have encountered a shark. The New York Times noted that Hoffman "had the presence of mind to remember that she had read in the Times that a bather can scare away a shark by splashing, and she beat up the water furiously." Hoffman was certain she was going to be devoured by the "Jersey man-eater", but later admitted she was "not sure ... whether she had her trouble for nothing or had barely escaped death."
Local New Jersey governments made efforts to protect bathers and the economy from man-eating sharks. The Fourth Avenue Beach at Asbury Park was enclosed with a steel-wire-mesh fence and patrolled by armed motorboats; it remained the only beach open following the Everingham incident. After the attacks on Stilwell, Fisher, and Dunn, residents of Matawan lined Matawan Creek with nets and detonated dynamite in an attempt to catch and kill the shark. Matawan mayor Arris B. Henderson ordered the Matawan Journal to print wanted posters offering a \$100 reward (\$ in dollars) to anyone who killed a shark in the creek. Despite the town's efforts, no sharks were captured or killed in Matawan Creek.
Resort communities along the Jersey Shore petitioned the federal government to aid local efforts to protect beaches and hunt sharks. The House of Representatives appropriated \$5,000 (\$ in dollars) for eradicating the New Jersey shark threat, and President Woodrow Wilson scheduled a meeting with his Cabinet to discuss the fatal attacks. Treasury secretary William Gibbs McAdoo suggested that the Coast Guard be mobilized to patrol the Jersey Shore and protect sun bathers. Shark hunts ensued across the coasts of New Jersey and New York; as the Atlanta Constitution reported on July 14, "Armed shark hunters in motor boats patrolled the New York and New Jersey coasts today while others lined the beaches in a concerted effort to exterminate the man-eaters ..." New Jersey governor James Fairman Fielder and local municipalities offered bounties to individuals hunting sharks. Hundreds of sharks were captured on the East Coast as a result of the attacks. The East Coast shark hunt has been described as "the largest scale animal hunt in history."
## Identifying the "Jersey man-eater"
After the second incident, scientists and the public began presenting theories to explain which species of shark was responsible for the Jersey Shore attacks or whether multiple sharks were involved.
Lucas and Nichols proposed that a northward-swimming rogue shark was responsible. They believed it would eventually arrive along New York's coast: "Unless the shark came through the Harbor and went through the north through Hell Gate and Long Island Sound, it was presumed it would swim along the South Shore of Long Island and the first deep water inlet it reaches will be the Jamaica Bay."
Witnesses of the Beach Haven fatality estimated that the shark was 9 feet (3 m) long. A sea captain who saw the event believed it was a Spanish shark driven from the Caribbean Sea decades earlier by bombings during the Spanish–American War. Several fishermen claimed to have caught the "Jersey man-eater" in the days following the attacks. A blue shark was captured on July 14 near Long Branch, and four days later the same Thomas Cottrell who had seen the shark in Matawan Creek claimed to have captured a sandbar shark with a gillnet near the mouth of the creek.
On July 14, Harlem taxidermist and Barnum and Bailey lion tamer Michael Schleisser caught a 7.5-foot (2.3 m), 325-pound (147 kg) shark while fishing in Raritan Bay, only a few miles from the mouth of Matawan Creek. The shark nearly sank the boat before Schleisser killed it with a broken oar. When he opened the shark's belly, he removed a "suspicious fleshy material and bones" that took up "about two-thirds of a milk crate" and "together weighed fifteen pounds." Scientists identified the shark as a young great white and the ingested remains as human. Schleisser mounted the shark and placed it on display in the window of a Manhattan shop on Broadway, but it was later lost. The only surviving photograph appeared in the Bronx Home News.
No further attacks were reported along the Jersey Shore in the summer of 1916 after the capture of Schleisser's great white shark. Murphy and Lucas declared the great white to be the "Jersey man-eater".
Skeptical individuals, however, offered alternative hypotheses, including opinions suggesting a non-shark perpetrator and even the influence of ongoing events associated with World War I.
In a letter to The New York Times, a Barrett P. Smith of Sound Beach, New York, over 135 miles (217 km) away on the far side of Long Island, wrote:
> Having read with much interest the account of the fatality off Spring Lake, N.J., I should like to offer a suggestion somewhat at variance with the shark theory. Scientists believe it is most unlikely that a shark was responsible, and lots of people though believe it much more likely that the attack was made by a sea turtle. Scientists have spent much time at sea and along shore, and have several times seen turtles large enough to inflict just such wounds. These creatures are of a vicious disposition, and when annoyed are extremely dangerous to approach, and it is a common theory that Bruder may have disturbed one while it was asleep on or close to the surface.
Another letter to The New York Times blamed the shark infestation on the maneuvers of German U-boats near America's East Coast. The anonymous writer claimed, "These sharks may have devoured human bodies in the waters of the German war zone and followed liners to this coast, or even followed the Deutschland herself, expecting the usual toll of drowning men, women, and children." The writer concluded, "This would account for their boldness and their craving for human flesh."
Over a century later, there is no consensus among researchers over Murphy and Lucas' investigation and findings. Richard G. Fernicola published two studies of the event, and notes that "there are many theories behind the New Jersey attacks," and all are inconclusive. Researchers such as Thomas Helm, Harold W. McCormick, Thomas B. Allen, William Young, Jean Campbell Butler, and Michael Capuzzo generally agree with Murphy and Lucas.
However, the National Geographic Society reported in 2002 that "some experts are suggesting that the great white may not in fact be responsible for many of the attacks pinned on the species. These people say the real culprit behind many of the reported incidents—including the famous 1916 shark attacks in New Jersey that may have served as inspiration for Jaws—may be the lesser known bull shark."
Biologists George A. Llano and Richard Ellis suggest that a bull shark could have been responsible for the fatal Jersey Shore attacks. Bull sharks swim from the ocean into freshwater rivers and streams and have attacked people around the world. In his book Sharks: Attacks on Man (1975), Llano writes,
> One of the most surprising aspects of the Matawan Creek attacks was the distance from the open sea. Elsewhere in the book are accounts of well-documented shark-human interactions at Ahwaz, Iran, which is 90 miles (140 km) upriver from the sea. It may also be of interest to note that sharks live in Lake Nicaragua, a fresh-water body, and in 1944 there was a bounty offered for dead freshwater sharks, as they had "killed and severely injured lake bathers recently."
Ellis points out that the great white "is an oceanic species, and Schleisser's shark was caught in the ocean. To find it swimming in a tidal creek is, to say the least, unusual, and may even be impossible. The bull shark, however, is infamous for its freshwater meanderings, as well as for its pugnacious and aggressive nature." He admits that "the bull shark is not a common species in New Jersey waters, but it does occur more frequently than the white."
In an interview with Michael Capuzzo, ichthyologist George H. Burgess surmises, "The species involved has always been doubtful and likely will continue to generate spirited debate." Burgess, however, does not discount the great white:
{{quote\|The bull draws a lot of votes because the location, Matawan Creek, suggests brackish or fresh waters, a habitat that bulls frequent and whites avoid. However, our examination of the site reveals that the size of the "creek," its depth, and salinity regime were closer to a marine embayment and that a smallish white clearly could have wandered into the area. Since an appropriate sized white shark with human remains in its stomach was captured nearby shortly after the attacks (and no further incidents occurred), it seems likely that this was the shark involved in at least the Matawan fatalities. The temporal and geographical sequence of the incidents also suggests that earlier attacks may have involved the same shark.
The casualties of the 1916 attacks are listed in the International Shark Attack File—of which Burgess is director—as victims of a great white.
The increased presence of humans in the water proved a factor in the attacks: "As the worldwide human population continues to rise year after year, so does ... interest in aquatic recreation. The number of shark attacks in any given year or region is highly influenced by the number of people entering the water." However, the likelihood that one shark was involved is contested. Scientists such as Victor M. Coppleson and Jean Butler, relying on evidence presented by Lucas and Murphy in 1916, assert that a single shark was responsible. On the other hand, Richard Fernicola notes that 1916 was a "shark year", as fishermen and captains were reporting hundreds of sharks swimming in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Ellis remarks that "to try to make the facts as we know them conform to the 'rogue shark' theory is stretching sensationalism and credibility beyond reasonable limits." He admits, "The evidence is long gone, and we will never really know if it was one shark or several, one species or another, that was responsible."
In 2011, further study was conducted in the Smithsonian Channel's The Real Story: Jaws. The documentary takes a closer look at the series of events from different perspectives. It was demonstrated in the Matawan Creek attacks, for example, that the full moon of the lunar cycle, which would have coincided with the attacks, would have raised the salinity in the water by more than double just a few hours before high tide. This would support the theory that a great white could have been responsible. Other evidence such as Joseph Dunn's injury suggested that the type of bite was more likely made by a bull shark as opposed to a great white, leading some to believe more than one shark was likely involved in the five incidents.
## Revising science
Before 1916, American scholars doubted that sharks would fatally wound a living person in the temperate waters of the northeastern United States without provocation. One skeptical scientist wrote, "There is a great difference between being attacked by a shark and being bitten by one." He believed that sharks tangled in fishing nets or feeding on carrion might accidentally bite a nearby human. In 1891, millionaire banker and adventurer Hermann Oelrichs offered a \$500 reward in the New York Sun "for an authenticated case of a man having been attacked by a shark in [the] temperate waters" north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. He wanted proof that "in temperate waters even one man, woman, or child, while alive, was ever attacked by a shark." The reward went unclaimed and scientists remained convinced that the upper eastern coast of the United States was inhabited by harmless sharks.
Academics were skeptical that a shark could produce fatal wounds on human victims. Ichthyologist Henry Weed Fowler and curator Henry Skinner of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia asserted that a shark's jaws did not have the power to sever a human leg in a single bite. Frederic Lucas, director of the American Museum of Natural History, questioned whether a shark even as large as 30 feet (9 m) could snap a human bone. He told The Philadelphia Inquirer in early 1916 that "it is beyond the power even of the largest Carcharodon to sever the leg of an adult man." Lucas summed up his argument by pointing to Oelrichs's unclaimed reward and that the chances of being bitten by a shark were "infinitely less than that of being struck by lightning and that there is practically no danger of an attack from a shark about our coasts."
The Jersey Shore attacks compelled scientists in the United States to revise their assumptions that sharks were timid and powerless. In July 1916, ichthyologist and editor for the National Geographic Society Hugh McCormick Smith published an article in the Newark Star-Eagle describing some shark species as "harmless as doves and others the incarnation of ferocity." He continued, "One of the most prodigious, and perhaps the most formidable of sharks is the man-eater, Carcharodon carcharias [great white]. It roams through all temperate and tropical seas, and everywhere is an object of dread. Its maximum length is forty feet and its teeth are three inches (76 mm) long."
By the end of July 1916, John Nichols and Robert Murphy were taking the great white more seriously. In Scientific American, Murphy wrote that the "white shark is perhaps the rarest of all noteworthy sharks ... their habits are little known, but they are said to feed to some extent on big sea turtles ... Judging from its physical make-up, it would not hesitate to attack a man in open water." He concluded that "because it is evident that even a relatively small white shark, weighing two or three hundred pounds, might readily snap the largest human bones by a jerk of its body, after it has bitten through the flesh."
Robert Murphy and John Nichols wrote in October 1916:
> There is something peculiarly sinister in the shark's make-up. The sight of his dark, lean [dorsal] fin lazily cutting zig-zags in the surface of some quiet, sparkling summer sea, and then slipping out of sight not to appear again, suggests an evil spirit. His leering, chinless face, his great mouth with its rows of knife-like teeth, which he knows too well to use on the fisherman's gear; the relentless fury with which, when his last hour has come, he thrashes on deck and snaps at his enemies; his toughness, his brutal, nerveless vitality and insensibility to physical injury, fail to elicit the admiration one feels for the dashing, brilliant, destructive, gastronomic bluefish, tunny, or salmon.
After the Matawan attacks, Frederic Lucas admitted on the front page of The New York Times that he had underestimated sharks. The paper reported that "the foremost authority on sharks in this country has doubted that any shark ever attacked a human being, and has published his doubts, but the recent cases have changed his view." Nichols later documented the occurrence of the great white shark in his biological survey Fishes of the Vicinity of New York City (1918), "Carcharodon carcharias (Linn.) White Shark. "Man-eater." Accidental in summer. June to July 14, 1916."
## Cultural impact
Whereas sharks had previously been seen as harmless, after the Jersey Shore attacks of 1916 the pendulum of public opinion swung to the other extreme, and sharks quickly came to be viewed not only as eating machines, but also as fearless, ruthless killers.
After the first fatality, newspaper cartoonists began using sharks as caricatures for political figures, German U-boats, Victorian morality and fashion, polio, and the deadly heat wave threatening the Northeast at the time. Fernicola notes, "Since 1916 was among the years that Americans were trying to break away from the rigidity and conservatism of the Victorian period, one comic depicted a risqué polka-dot bathing suit and advertised it as the secret weapon to keep sharks away from our swimmers." Another cartoon depicted "an exasperated individual at the end of a dock that displays a 'Danger: No Swimming' sign and mentions the three most emphasized 'danger' topics of the day: 'Infantile Paralysis (polio), Epidemic Heat Wave, and Sharks in the Ocean'." The cartoon is entitled "What's a Family Man to Do?" With World War I ongoing in 1916 and America's growing distrust of Germany, cartoonists depicted U-boats with the mouth and fins of a shark assaulting Uncle Sam while he wades in the water.
In 1974, writer Peter Benchley published Jaws, a novel about a rogue great white shark that terrorizes the fictional Long Island coastal community of Amity. Chief of police Martin Brody, biologist Matt Hooper, and fisherman Quint hunt the shark after it kills four people. The novel was adapted as the film Jaws by Steven Spielberg in 1975. Spielberg's film makes reference to the events of 1916: Brody (Roy Scheider) and Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) urge Amity's Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) to close the beaches on the Fourth of July after the deaths of two swimmers and a fisherman. Hooper explains to the mayor, "Look, the situation is that apparently a great white shark has staked a claim in the waters off Amity Island. And he's going to continue to feed here as long as there is food in the water." Brody adds, "And there's no limit to what he's gonna do! I mean we've already had three incidents, two people killed inside of a week. And it's gonna happen again, it happened before! The Jersey beach! ... 1916! Five people chewed up on the surf!" Richard Ellis, Richard Fernicola, and Michael Capuzzo all suggest that the 1916 Jersey Shore attacks, Coppleson's rogue shark theory, and the exploits of New York fisherman Frank Mundus inspired Benchley. The attacks are also briefly referred to in Benchley's novel White Shark.
The 1916 fatal attacks are the subject of three studies: Richard G. Fernicola's In Search of the "Jersey Man-Eater" (1987) and Twelve Days of Terror (2001), and Michael Capuzzo's Close to Shore (2001). Capuzzo offers an in-depth dramatization of the incident, and Fernicola examines the scientific, medical, and social aspects of the attacks. Fernicola's research is the basis of an episode of the History Channel's documentary series In Search of History titled "Shark Attack 1916" (2001) and the Discovery Channel's docudrama 12 Days of Terror (2004). Fernicola also wrote and directed a 90-minute documentary called Tracking the Jersey Man-Eater. It was produced by the George Marine Library in 1991; however, it was never widely released.
The attacks at Matawan are the subject of the National Geographic Channel documentary Attacks of the Mystery Shark (2002), which examines the possibility that a bull shark was responsible for killing Stanley Fisher and Lester Stilwell; Discovery Channel's Blood in the Water (2009); Shore Thing (2009) (directed by Lovari and James Hill); and the Smithsonian Channel's The Real Story: Jaws (2011).
Seattle hardcore band Akimbo's 2008 concept album Jersey Shores was based on the 1916 attacks.
## See also
- List of fatal shark attacks in the United States
- Summer of the Shark
- 2010 Sharm El Sheikh shark attacks
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Amir Hamzah
| 1,171,851,819 |
Indonesian poet (1911–1946)
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"1946 deaths",
"20th-century male writers",
"20th-century translators",
"Amir Hamzah",
"Executed Indonesian people",
"Executed royalty",
"Indonesian male poets",
"Indonesian people of Malay descent",
"Indonesian translators",
"Murdered royalty",
"National Heroes of Indonesia",
"People from Langkat Regency"
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Tengku Amir Hamzah (February 1911 – 20 March 1946) was an Indonesian poet and National Hero of Indonesia. Born into a Malay aristocratic family in the Sultanate of Langkat in North Sumatra, he was educated in both Sumatra and Java. While attending senior high school in Surakarta around 1930, Amir became involved with the nationalist movement and fell in love with a Javanese schoolmate, Ilik Sundari. Even after Amir continued his studies in legal school in Batavia (now Jakarta) the two remained close, only separating in 1937 when Amir was recalled to Sumatra to marry the sultan's daughter and take on responsibilities of the court. Though unhappy with his marriage, he fulfilled his courtly duties. After Indonesia proclaimed its independence in 1945, he served as the government's representative in Langkat. The following year he was killed in a social revolution led by the PESINDO (Pemuda Sosialis Indonesia), and buried in a mass grave.
Amir began writing poetry while still a teenager: though his works are undated, the earliest are thought to have been written when he first travelled to Java. Drawing influences from his own Malay culture and Islam, as well as from Christianity and Eastern literature, Amir wrote 50 poems, 18 pieces of lyrical prose, and numerous other works, including several translations. In 1932 he co-founded the literary magazine Poedjangga Baroe. After his return to Sumatra, he stopped writing. Most of his poems were published in two collections, Nyanyi Sunyi (1937) and Buah Rindu (1941), first in Poedjangga Baroe then as stand-alone books.
Poems by Amir deal with the themes of love and religion and his poetry often reflects a deep inner conflict. His diction, using both Malay and Javanese words and expanding on traditional structures, was influenced by the need for rhythm and metre, as well as symbolism related to particular terms. His earlier works deal with a sense of longing and both erotic and idealised love, whereas his later works have a deeper religious meaning. Of his two collections, Nyanyi Sunyi is considered the most developed. Amir has been called the "King of the Poedjangga Baroe-era Poets" and the only international-class Indonesian poet from before the Indonesian National Revolution.
## Early life
Amir was born as Tengkoe Amir Hamzah Pangeran Indra Poetera in Tanjung Pura, Langkat, North Sumatra, the youngest son of Vice Sultan Tengku Muhammad Adil and his third wife Tengku Mahjiwa. Through his father, he was related to the Sultan of Langkat, Machmud. Sources disagree over his date of birth. The date officially recognised by the Indonesian government is 28 February 1911, a date Amir used throughout his life. However, his elder brother Abdullah Hod states that the poet was born on 11 February 1911. Amir later took the name of his grandfather, Teungku Hamzah, as a second name; thus, he was referred to as Amir Hamzah. Though a child of nobility, he would often associate with non-nobles.
Amir was schooled in Islamic principles such as Qu'ran reading, fiqh, and tawhid, and studied at the Azizi Mosque in Tanjung Pura from a young age. He remained a devout Muslim throughout his life. Sources disagree on the period in which he completed his formal studies. Several sources, including the Indonesian government's Language Centre, state that he started school in 1916, while the biographer M. Lah Husny puts the future poet's first year of formal schooling as 1918. At the Dutch-language elementary school where Amir first studied, he began writing and received good marks; in her biography of him, Nh. Dini writes that Amir was nicknamed "older brother" (abang) by his classmates as he was much taller than them.
In 1924 or 1925, Amir graduated from the school in Langkat and moved to Medan to study at the Meer Uitgebreid Lager Onderwijs (MULO; middle school) there. After completing his studies some two years later, he entered a formal relationship with his cousin from his mother's side, Aja (also Aje) Bun. Husny wrote that the two were arranged to be married by their parents, while Dini cast the relationship as a vow to be always faithful. As his parents permitted him to finish his studies in Java, Amir moved to the colonial capital at Batavia (now Jakarta) to complete his studies.
## Time in Java
Alone aboard the Plancus, Amir made the three-day boat trip to Java. Upon arriving at Batavia, he enrolled at a Christian MULO there, where he completed his last year of junior high school. Anthony H. Johns of Australian National University writes that he learned some Christian concepts and values. Also in Batavia, Amir became involved with the social organisation Jong Sumatera. During this period Amir wrote his first poems. Husny credits several to his heartbreak after he found out that Aja Bun had been married to another man without Amir's knowledge (the two never spoke again), while Dini suggests that the poem "Tinggallah" was written not long after he boarded the Plancus, while he was longing for his parents.
After a brief return to Sumatra, Amir continued to a Boedi Oetomo-operated Algemene Middelbare School (AMS; senior high school) in Surakarta, Central Java, where he studied eastern literature and languages, including Javanese, Sanskrit, and Arabic. Preferring solitude to the bustle of the dormitories, Amir boarded at a privately owned home of a Surakartan resident. Later he met several future writers, including Armijn Pane and Achdiat Karta Mihardja; they soon found him to be a friendly and diligent student with complete notes and a spotless bedroom (sheets folded so well, Mihardja later recalled, that a "lost fly could have easily slid over them"), but also a romantic, prone to thinking wistfully beneath the lamplight and isolating himself from his classmates.
In Surakarta Amir joined the nationalist movement. He would meet with fellow Sumatrans and discuss the social plight of the Malay archipelago's populace under Dutch colonial rule. Though most educated youth at the time preferred speaking Dutch, he insisted on speaking Malay. In 1930 Amir became head of the Surakartan branch of the Indonesia Muda (Young Indonesians), delivering a speech at the 1930 Youth Congress and serving as an editor of the organisation's magazine Garuda Merapi. At school he also met Ilik Sundari, a Javanese woman nearly his age with whom he fell in love. Sundari, the daughter of Raden Mas Kusumodihardjo, was one of the few female students at the school, and her home was near one of those in which Amir boarded. According to Dini, the two grew closer, Amir teaching Sundari Arabic and Sundari teaching him Javanese. They were soon meeting every day, conversing on a variety of topics.
Amir's mother died in 1931, and his father the year after, meaning that his education could no longer be funded. After his AMS studies concluded, he wanted to continue to study at a law school in Batavia. As such, he wrote to his brother, Jakfar, who arranged for the remainder of his studies to be paid for by the Sultan. In 1932 Amir was able to return to Batavia and begin his legal studies, taking up a part-time job as a teacher. At first, his relationship with Sundari was continued through letters, though she soon continued her studies in Lembang, a city much closer than Surakarta; this allowed the two to meet furtively – when Sundari's parents had discovered their relationship, Amir and Sundari had been forbidden from meeting.
This year Amir's first two poems, "Sunyi" ("Silent") and "Mabuk..." ("Nauseous..."), were published in the March edition of the magazine Timboel. His other eight works published in 1932 included a syair based on the Hikayat Hang Tuah, three other poems, two pieces of lyrical prose, and two short stories; the poems were again published in Timboel, while the prose was included in the magazine Pandji Poestaka. Around September 1932 Armijn Pane, upon the urgings of Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana, editor of "Memadjoekan Sastera" ("Advancing Literature", the literary section of Pandji Poestaka), invited Amir to help them establish an independent literary magazine. Amir accepted, and was tasked with writing letters to solicit submissions; a total of fifty letters were sent to noted writers, including forty sent to contributors to "Memadjoekan Sastera". After several months of preparations, the initial edition was published in July 1933, under the title Poedjangga Baroe. The new magazine was left under the editorial control of Armijn and Alisjahbana, while Amir published almost all of his subsequent writings there.
In mid-1933 Amir was recalled to Langkat, where the Sultan informed him of two conditions which he had to fulfil to continue his studies: be a diligent student and abandon the independence movement. Despite the Sultan's disapproval, Amir became more heavily involved in the nationalist movement, bringing him under increasing Dutch scrutiny. He continued to publish in Poedjangga Baroe, including a series of five articles on Eastern literatures from June to December 1934 and a translation of the Bhagavad Gita from 1933 to 1935. His legal studies, however, were delayed, and by 1937 he had still not graduated.
## Return to Langkat
The Dutch, concerned about Amir's nationalistic tendencies, convinced the Sultan to send him back to Langkat, an order which the fledgling poet was unable to refuse. In 1937, Amir, together with two of the Sultan's vassals tasked with escorting him, boarded the Opten Noort from Tanjung Priok and returned to Sumatra. Upon arriving in Langkat, he was informed that he was to be married to the Sultan's eldest daughter, Tengku Puteri Kamiliah, a woman he had barely met. Before the wedding Amir returned to Batavia to face his final exam – and have one last meeting with Sundari. Several weeks later he returned to Langkat, where he and Kamiliah were married in an extravagant ceremony. His cousin, Tengku Burhan, later stated that Amir's indifference throughout the seven-day event was due to his thinking of Sundari.
Now a prince (pangeran), Amir was given the title Tengku Pangeran Indra Putera. He lived with Kamiliah in their own home. By all accounts, she was a devout and loving wife, and in 1939 the couple had their only child, a daughter named Tengku Tahura. According to Dini, Amir professed to Kamiliah that he could never love her as he had Sundari and that he felt obligated to marry her, something which Kamiliah reportedly accepted. The poet retained an album with his Javanese sweetheart's photographs at home and would often isolate himself from his family, lost in thought. As a prince of Langkat, Amir became a court official, handling administrative and legal matters, and at times judging criminal cases. He once represented the sultanate at the funeral of Pakubuwono X in Java – Amir's last trip to the island.
Although Amir had little correspondence with his friends in Java, his poems – most of which had been written in Java – continued to be published in Poedjangga Baroe. His first poetry collection, Nyanyi Sunyi (Songs of Silence), was published in the magazine's November 1937 edition. Nearly two years later, in June 1939, the magazine published a collection of poems Amir had translated, entitled Setanggi Timur (Incense from the East). In June 1941 his last collection, Buah Rindu (Fruits of Longing), was published. All were later republished as stand-alone books. A last book, Sastera Melayu Lama dan Raja-Rajanya (Old Malay Literature and its Kings), was published in Medan in 1942; this was based on a radio speech Amir had delivered.
After the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, the government of the Indies began preparing for a possible Japanese invasion. In Langkat, a Home Guard, or Stadswacht, division was established to defend Tanjung Pura, in Langkat. Amir and his cousin Tengku Harun were in charge; the nobility, trusted by the general populace, was selected to ensure easier recruitment of commoners. When the invasion became a reality in early 1942, Amir was one of the soldiers sent to Medan to defend it. He and the other Dutch-allied forces were quickly captured by the Japanese. He was held as a prisoner of war until 1943, when influence from the Sultan allowed him to be released. Throughout the remainder of the occupation, which lasted until 1945, Amir was employed as a radio commentator and censor in Medan. In his position as prince, he was tasked with helping to collect rice to feed the Japanese occupation army.
## Post-Independence and death
After Indonesia proclaimed its independence on 17 August 1945, the entirety of Sumatra was declared a de facto part of the country. The central government established Teuku Muhammad Hasan as the island's first governor, and on 29 October 1945 Hasan selected Amir as the government representative in Langkat (later equated to regent), with his office at Binjai. Amir accepted the position readily, subsequently handling numerous tasks set by the central government, including inaugurating the first local division of the People's Safety Army (Tentara Keamanan Rakjat; the predecessor to the Indonesian Army) opening meetings of various local branches of national political parties, and promoting education – particularly Latin-alphabet literacy.
The ongoing Indonesian National Revolution, with various battles in Java, meant that the newly established republic was unstable. In early 1946, rumours spread in Langkat that Amir had been seen dining with representatives of the returning Dutch government, and there was growing unrest within the general populace. On 7 March 1946, during a social revolution led by factions of the Communist Party of Indonesia, a group staunchly against feudalism and the nobility, Amir's power was stripped from him and he was arrested; Kamiliah and Tahura escaped. Together with other members of the Langkat nobility, he was sent to a Communist-held plantation at Kuala Begumit, some 10 kilometres (6 mi) outside of Binjai. Later testimony suggests that the detainees were tried by their captors, forced to dig holes, and tortured.
Amir's last piece of writing, a fragment from his 1941 poem "Buah Rindu", was later found in his cell:
On the morning of 20 March 1946, Amir was killed with 26 other people and buried in a mass grave which the detainees had dug; several of his siblings were also killed in the revolution. After it was quashed by nationalist forces, the revolution's leaders were questioned by a team led by Amir Sjarifuddin and Adnan Kapau Gani: they are reported to have repeatedly asked "Where is Amir Hamzah?" during the investigation. In 1948 the grave at Kuala Begumit was dug up and the remains identified by family members; Amir's bones were identified owing to a missing false tooth. In November 1949 his body was reinterred at the Azizi Mosque in Tanjung Pura, Langkat.
## Influences
Amir was raised in a court setting, where he spoke Malay until it had "become his flesh and blood". From a young age he was exposed to oral and written pantuns and syair, both listening and improvisationally creating his own. As with his father before him, Amir enjoyed traditional texts, such as Hikayat Hang Tuah, Syair Siti Zubaidah, and Hikayat Panca Tanderan. He would listen to these when they were read in public ceremonies, and as an adult he kept a large collection of such texts, though these were destroyed during the communist revolution.
Throughout his formal education Amir read works of Arabic, Persian, and Hindu literature. He was also influenced by works from other Eastern countries: poems translated in Setanggi Timur, for instance, include works by Omar Khayyám (Persia), Du Fu (China), Fukuda Chiyo-ni (Japan), and Rabindranath Tagore (India). These works were not read in the original, but from Dutch translations. The literary critic Muhammad Balfas writes that, unlike his contemporaries, Amir drew little influence from sonnets and the neo-romantic Dutch poets, the Tachtigers; Johns comes to the same conclusion. The Australian literary scholar Keith Foulcher, however, noting that the poet quoted Willem Kloos's "Lenteavond" in his article on pantuns, suggests that Amir was very likely influenced by the Tachtigers.
Many writers have commented on Amir's influence from Islamic doctrine. The Indonesian literary documentarian H.B. Jassin and the poet Arief Bagus Prasetyo, among others, argue that Amir was a purely orthodox Muslim and that it showed in his work. Prasetyo argues that this was evident in his treatment of God; he does not view God as his equal, a theme found in the works of such Sufi poets as Hamzah Fansuri, but as the master to Amir's servant. Johns writes that, though he was not a mystic, Amir was also not a purely devotional writer, instead promoting a form of "Islamic Humanism". Others, such as the Dutch scholar of Indonesian literature A. Teeuw and the Indonesian scholar of literature Abdul Hadi WM, find Amir to be influenced by Sufism. Aprinus Salam of Gadjah Mada University, of the same position, points to the instances where Hamzah treats God as a lover as indicative of Sufi influence. Ultimately, the poet Chairil Anwar wrote that Amir's Nyanyi Sunyi could be termed "obscure poetry" as readers cannot understand the works without prior knowledge of Malay history and Islam.
Some attempts have also been made to connect Amir's works to a Christian perspective. In analysing "Padamu Jua", the Indonesian critic Bakri Siregar suggests that some influences from the Christian Bible are evident, pointing to several aspects of the poem that would seem to support such a view, including the depiction of an anthropomorphic God (not allowed in orthodox Islam) and the idea of a jealous God. He writes that the concept of a jealous God is not found in Islam, but is in the Bible, citing Exodus 20:5 and Exodus 34:14. In another poem, "Permainanmu", Hamzah uses the sentence "Kau keraskan kalbunya" (You harden his heart); Jassin draws a parallel to God hardening the Pharaoh's heart in the Book of Exodus.
Jassin writes that Amir's poems were also influenced by his love for one or more women, in Buah Rindu referred to as "Tedja" and "Sendari-Dewi"; he opines that the woman or women are never named as Amir's love for them is the key. Husny writes that at least nine of the works in Buah Rindu were inspired by his longing for Aja Bun, portraying a sense of disappointment after their engagement was called off. Regarding the book's three-part dedication, "to the mournful Greater Indonesia / to the ashes of the Mother-Queen / and to the feet of the Sendari-Goddess", Mihardja writes that Sundari was immediately recognisable to any of Amir's classmates; he considers her the poet's inspiration as "Laura to Petrarch, Mathilde to Jacques Perk". The critic Zuber Usman finds Sundari's influence on Nyanyi Sunyi as well, suggesting his parting from her led Amir closer to God, an opinion Dini echoes. The translator Burton Raffel connects a couplet at the end of the book, reading "Sunting sanggul melayah rendah / sekaki sajak seni sedih" ("A flower floating in a loose knot of hair / Gave birth to my sorrowful poems") as a call out to a forbidden love. Dini credits Amir's love for Sundari for his frequent use of Javanese terms in his writing.
## Works
Altogether Amir wrote fifty poems, eighteen pieces of lyrical prose, twelve articles, four short stories, three poetry collections, and one original book. He also translated forty-four poems, one piece of lyrical prose, and one book; these translations, Johns writes, generally reflected themes important in his original work.
The vast majority of Amir's writings were published in Poedjangga Baroe, although some earlier ones were published in Timboel and Pandji Poestaka. None of his creative works are dated, and there is no consensus regarding when individual poems were written. However, there is a consensus that the works included in Nyanyi Sunyi were written after those included in Buah Rindu, despite the latter being published last. Johns writes that the poems in the collections appear to be arranged in chronological order; he points to the various degrees of maturity Amir showed as his writing developed.
Jassin writes that Amir maintained a Malay identity throughout his works, despite attending schools run by Europeans. Unlike the works of his contemporaries Alisjahbana or Sanusi Pane, his poems did not include symbols of a Europeanised modernity such as electricity, trains, telephones, and engines, allowing "the natural Malay world to show wholly". Ultimately, when reading Amir's poems "in our imagination we do not see a man in pants, a jacket, and tie, but a youth in traditional Malay garb". Mihardja notes that Amir wrote his works at a time when all of their classmates, and many poets elsewhere, were "pouring their hearts or thoughts" in Dutch, or, if "able to free themselves from the shackles of Dutch", in a local language.
Amir's work often dealt with love (both erotic and idealised), with religious influences showing in many of his poems. Mysticism is important in many of his works, and his poetry often reflects a deep inner conflict. In at least one of his short stories, he criticised the traditional view of nobility and "subverts the traditional representation of female characters". There are several thematic differences between his two original poetry collections, discussed further below.
### Nyanyi Sunyi
Nyanyi Sunyi, Amir's first poetry collection, was published in the November 1937 issue of Poedjangga Baroe, then as a stand-alone book by Poestaka Rakjat in 1938. It consists of twenty-four titled pieces and an untitled quatrain, including Hamzah's best-known poem, "Padamu Jua". Jassin classifies eight of these works as lyrical prose, with the remaining thirteen as regular poems. Although it is his first published collection, based on the well-developed nature of the poems within, general consensus is that the works in Buah Rindu were written earlier. The poet Laurens Koster Bohang considers the poems included in Nyanyi Sunyi as having been written between 1933 and 1937, while Teeuw dates the poems to 1936 and 1937.
Readings of Nyanyi Sunyi have tended to focus on religious undertones. According to Balfas, religion and God are omnipresent throughout the collection, beginning with its first poem "Padamu Jua". In it, Jassin writes, Amir shows a feeling of dissatisfaction over his own lack of power and protests God's absoluteness, but seems aware of his own smallness before God, acting as a puppet for God's will. Teeuw summarises that Amir recognises that he would not exist if God did not. Jassin finds that the theme of religion is meant as an escape from the poet's worldly sorrows. Johns, however, suggests that ultimately Amir finds little solace in God, as he "did not possess the transcendent faith which can make a great sacrifice, and resolutely accept the consequences"; instead, he seems to regret his choice to go to Sumatra and then revolts against God.
### Buah Rindu
Amir's second poetry collection, Buah Rindu, was published in the June 1941 issue of Poedjangga Baroe, then as a stand-alone book by Poestaka Rakjat later that year. It consists of twenty-five titled pieces and an untitled quatrain; one, "Buah Rindu", consists of four parts, while another, "Bonda", consists of two. At least eleven of the works had previously been published, either in Timboel or in Pandji Poestaka. This collection though published after Nyanyi Sunyi, is generally considered to have been written earlier. The poems in Buah Rindu date to the period between 1928 and 1935, Amir's first years in Java; the collection gives the two years, as well the location of writing as Jakarta–Solo (Surakarta)–Jakarta.
Teeuw writes that this collection is united by a theme of longing, which Jassin expands on: longing for his mother, longing for his lovers (both the one in Sumatra and the one in Java), and longing for his homeland. All are referred to as "kekasih" (beloved) in turn. These longings, Teeuw writes, are unlike the religious overtones of Nyanyi Sunyi, being more worldly and grounded in reality. Jassin notes another thematic distinction between the two: unlike Nyanyi Sunyi, with its clear depiction of one god, Buah Rindu explicitly puts forth several deities, including the Hindu gods Shiva and Parvati and abstract ones like the god and goddess of love.
## Style
Amir's diction was influenced by the need for rhythm and metre, as well as symbolism related to particular terms. This careful diction emphasised simple words as the basic unit and occasional uses of alliteration and assonance. Ultimately he is freer in his language use than traditional poets: Jennifer Lindsay and Ying Ying Tan highlight his "verbal inventiveness", injecting a "lavishness of expression, a mellifluous of sound and meaning" into his poetry. Siregar writes that the result is "a beautiful wordplay". Teeuw writes that Amir had a complete understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of Malay, mixing eastern and western influences, whilst Johns writes that his "genius as a poet lay in his remarkable ability to resurrect the burnt-out embers of Malay poetry, and to infuse into the forms and rich vocabulary of traditional Malay an unexpected and vivid freshness and life."
The choice of words depends heavily on old Malay terms which saw little contemporary use. Amir also borrows heavily from other Indonesian languages, particularly Javanese and Sundanese; the influences are more predominant in Nyanyi Sunyi. As such, early printings of Nyanyi Sunyi and Buah Rindu were accompanied by footnotes explaining these words. Teeuw writes that the poems included numerous clichés common in pantuns which would not be understood by foreign readers. According to the translator John M. Echols, Amir was a writer of great sensitivity who was "not a prolific writer but his prose and poetry are on a very high level, though difficult reading even for Indonesians." Echols credits Amir with a revival of the Malay language, breathing new life into Malay literature in the 1930s.
Structurally, Amir's early works are quite different from his later ones. The works compiled in Buah Rindu generally followed the traditional pantun and syair style of quatrains with tail rhymes, including many with rhyming couplets; some works, however, combined the two, or had additional lines or more words than traditionally acceptable, resulting in a different rhythm. Though these early works were not as detailed as Amir's later works, Teeuw writes that they did reflect the poet's mastery of the language and his drive to write poems. Works in this anthology repeated terms of sadness such as menangis (cry), duka (grief), rindu (longing), and air mata (tears), as well as words such as cinta (love), asmara (passion), and merantau (wander).
By the time Amir wrote the works later compiled in Nyanyi Sunyi, his style had shifted. No longer did he confine himself to the traditional forms, but instead he explored different possibilities: eight of his works approached lyrical prose in form. Anwar described his predecessor's use of language in the collection as clean and pure, with "compactly violent, sharp, and yet short" sentences which departed from the "destructive force" of flowery traditional Malay poetry.
## Awards and recognition
Amir has received extensive recognition from the Indonesian government, beginning with recognition from the government of North Sumatra soon after his death. In 1969 he was granted both a Satya Lencana Kebudayaan (Satya Lencana Award for Culture) and Piagam Anugerah Seni (Art Prize). In 1975 he was declared a National Hero of Indonesia. A park named after him, Taman Amir Hamzah, is found in Jakarta near the National Monument. A mosque in Taman Ismail Marzuki, opened to the public in 1977, is also named after him. Several streets are named after Amir, including in Medan, Mataram, and Surabaya.
Teeuw considers Amir the only international-class Indonesian poet from before the Indonesian National Revolution. Anwar wrote that the poet was the "summit of the Pudjangga Baru movement", considering Nyanyi Sunyi to have been a "bright light he [Amir] shone on the new language"; however, Anwar disliked Buah Rindu, considering it too classical. Balfas describes Amir's works as "the best literary products to surpass their time". Hamzah's work, particularly "Padamu Jua", is taught in Indonesian schools. His œuvre was also one of the inspirations for Afrizal Malna's 1992 postmodern stage play Biografi Yanti setelah 12 Menit (Biography of Yanti After 12 Minutes).
Jassin has called Amir the "King of the Pudjangga Baru-era Poets", a name he used as the title of his book on the poet. In closing his book, Jassin writes:
> Amir was not a leader with a loud voice driving the people, either in his poems or his prose. He was a man of emotion, a man of awe, his soul easily shaken by the beauty of nature, sadness and joy alternating freely. All his poems were imbibed with the breath of love: for nature, for home, for flowers, for a beloved. He longed unendingly, in the most dark of days, for joy, for 'life with a definite purpose'. Not one poem of struggle, not a single call for empowerment like those which echoed from the other Poedjangga Baroe poets. But his songs of nature were an intimate permeation of a person whose love for his country was never in doubt.
## Explanatory notes
|
193,577 |
Lynx (constellation)
| 1,173,031,215 |
Constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere
|
[
"Constellations listed by Johannes Hevelius",
"Lynx (constellation)",
"Northern constellations"
] |
Lynx is a constellation named after the animal, usually observed in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere. The constellation was introduced in the late 17th century by Johannes Hevelius. It is a faint constellation, with its brightest stars forming a zigzag line. The orange giant Alpha Lyncis is the brightest star in the constellation, and the semiregular variable star Y Lyncis is a target for amateur astronomers. Six star systems have been found to contain planets. Those of 6 Lyncis and HD 75898 were discovered by the Doppler method; those of XO-2, XO-4, XO-5 and WASP-13 were observed as they passed in front of the host star.
Within the constellation's borders lie NGC 2419, an unusually remote globular cluster; the galaxy NGC 2770, which has hosted three recent Type Ib supernovae; the distant quasar APM 08279+5255, whose light is magnified and split into multiple images by the gravitational lensing effect of a foreground galaxy; and the Lynx Supercluster, which was the most distant supercluster known at the time of its discovery in 1999.
## History
Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius formed the constellation in 1687 from 19 faint stars between the constellations Ursa Major and Auriga that earlier had been part of the obsolete constellation Jordanus Fluvius. Naming it Lynx because of its faintness, he challenged future stargazers to see it, declaring that only the lynx-eyed (those with good sight) would have been able to recognize it. Hevelius used the name Tigris (Tiger) in his catalogue as well, but kept the former name only in his atlas. English astronomer John Flamsteed adopted the constellation in his catalogue, published in 1712, and his subsequent atlas. According to 19th-century amateur astronomer Richard Hinckley Allen, the chief stars in Lynx "might well have been utilized by the modern constructor, whoever he was, of our Ursa Major to complete the quartette of feet."
## Characteristics
Lynx is bordered by Camelopardalis to the north, Auriga to the west, Gemini to the southwest, Cancer to the south, Leo to the east and Ursa Major to the northeast. Covering 545.4 square degrees and 1.322% of the night sky, it ranks 28th of the 88 constellations in size, surpassing better known constellations such as Gemini. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Lyn". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 20 segments (illustrated in infobox). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and , and the declination coordinates are between +32.97° and +61.96°. On dark nights, the brighter stars can be seen as a crooked line extending roughly between Camelopardalis and Leo, and north of the bright star Castor. Lynx is most readily observed from the late winter to late summer to northern hemisphere observers, with midnight culmination occurring on 20 January. The whole constellation is visible to observers north of latitude 28°S.
## Notable features
### Stars
English astronomer Francis Baily gave a single star a Bayer designation—Alpha Lyncis—while Flamsteed numbered 44 stars, though several lie across the boundary in Ursa Major. Overall, there are 97 stars within the constellation's borders brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5.
The brightest star in this constellation is Alpha Lyncis, with an apparent (visual) magnitude of 3.14. It is an orange giant of spectral type K7III located 203 ± 2 light-years distant from Earth. Around twice as massive as the Sun, it has exhausted the hydrogen at its core and has evolved away from the main sequence. The star has swollen to about 55 times the Sun's radius and is emitting roughly 673 times the luminosity of the Sun. The stellar atmosphere has cooled, giving it a surface temperature of 3,880 K. The only star with a proper name is Alsciaukat (from the Arabic for thorn), also known as 31 Lyncis, located 380 ± 10 light-years from Earth. This star is also an evolved giant with around twice the Sun's mass that has swollen and cooled since exhausting its core hydrogen. It is anywhere from 59 to 75 times as wide as the Sun, and 740 times as luminous. Alsciaukat is also a variable star, ranging in brightness by 0.05 magnitude over 25 to 30 days from its baseline magnitude of 4.25.
Lynx is rich in double stars. The second brightest star in the constellation is 38 Lyncis at magnitude 3.8. When viewed through a moderate telescope, the two components—a brighter blue-white star of magnitude 3.9 and a fainter star of magnitude 6.1 that has been described as lilac as well as blue-white—can be seen. 15 Lyncis is another star that is found to be a double system when viewed through a telescope, separating into two yellowish stars of magnitudes 4.7 and 5.8 that are 0.9 arcseconds apart. The components are a yellow giant of spectral type G8III that is around 4.01 times as massive as the Sun, and a yellow-white main sequence star of spectral type F8V that is around 3.73 times as massive as the Sun. Orbiting each other every 262 years, the stars are 178 ± 2 light years distant from Earth. 12 Lyncis has a combined apparent magnitude of 4.87. When seen through a telescope, it can be separated into three stars: two components with magnitudes 5.4 and 6.0 that lie at an angular separation by 1.8′′ (as of 1992) and a yellow-hued star of magnitude 7.2 at a separation of 8.6′′ (as of 1990). The two brighter stars are estimated to orbit each other with a period that is poorly known but estimated to be roughly 700 to 900 years. The 12 Lyncis system is 210 ± 10 light years distant from Earth.
10 Ursae Majoris is the third-brightest star in Lynx. Originally in the neighbouring constellation Ursa Major, it became part of Lynx with the official establishment of the constellation's borders. Appearing to be of magnitude 3.97, a telescope reveals a yellow-white main sequence star of spectral type F4V of magnitude 4.11 and a star very similar to the Sun of spectral type G5V and magnitude 6.18. The two are 10.6 astronomical units (au) apart and orbit each other every 21.78 years. The system is 52.4 ± 0.6 light-years distant from Earth. Likewise 16 Lyncis was originally known as Psi<sup>10</sup> Aurigae and conversely, 37, 39, 41 and 44 Lyncis became part of Ursa Major.
Y Lyncis is a popular target among amateur astronomers, as it is a semiregular variable ranging in brightness from magnitude 6.2 to 8.9. These shifts in brightness are complex, with a shorter period of 110 days due to the star's pulsations, and a longer period of 1400 days possibly due to the star's rotation or regular cycles in its convection. A red supergiant, it has an estimated diameter around 580 times that of the Sun, is around 1.5 to 2 times as massive, and has a luminosity around 25,000 times that of the Sun. 1 Lyncis and UX Lyncis are red giants that are also semiregular variables with complex fluctuations in brightness.
Six star systems have been found to contain exoplanets, of which two were discovered by the Doppler method and four by the transit method. 6 Lyncis, an orange subgiant that spent much of its life as an A-type or F-type main sequence star, is orbited by a planet with a minimum mass of 2.4 Jupiter masses and an orbital period of 899 days. HD 75898 is a 3.8 ± 0.8 billion-year-old yellow star of spectral type G0V that has just begun expanding and cooling off the main sequence. It has a planet at least 2.51 times as massive as Jupiter orbiting with a period of around 418 days. The centre of mass of the system is accelerating, indicating there is a third, more distant, component at least the size of Jupiter. Three star systems were found to have planets that were observed by the XO Telescope in Hawaii as they passed in front of them. XO-2 is a binary star system, both the stars of which are slightly less massive and cooler than the Sun and have planetary companions: XO-2S has a Saturn-mass planet at 0.13 au distance with a period of around 18 days, and one a little more massive than Jupiter at a distance of 0.48 au and with a period of around 120 days, and XO-2N has a hot Jupiter with around half Jupiter's mass that has an orbit of only 2.6 days. XO-4 is an F-type main sequence star that is a little hotter and more massive than the Sun that has a hot Jupiter orbiting with a period of around 4.1 days. XO-5 is a Sun-like star with a hot Jupiter about as massive as Jupiter that takes around 4.2 days to complete an orbit. WASP-13, a Sun-like star that has begun to swell and cool off the main sequence, had a transiting planet discovered by the SuperWASP program in 2009. The planet is around half as massive as Jupiter and takes 4.35 days to complete a revolution.
### Deep-sky objects
Lynx's most notable deep sky object is NGC 2419, also called the "Intergalactic Wanderer" as it was assumed to lie outside the Milky Way. At a distance of between 275,000 and 300,000 light-years from Earth, it is one of the most distant known globular clusters within our galaxy. NGC 2419 is likely in a highly elliptical orbit around the Milky Way. It has a magnitude of +9.06 and is a Shapley class VII cluster. Originally thought to be a star, NGC 2419 was discovered to be a globular cluster by American astronomer Carl Lampland.
NGC 2537, known as the Bear's Paw Galaxy, lies about 3 degrees north-northwest of 31 Lyncis. It is a blue compact dwarf galaxy that is somewhere between 17 and 30 million light-years away from Earth. Close by is IC 2233, a very flat and thin spiral galaxy that is between 26 and 40 million light-years away from Earth. A comparatively quiet galaxy with a low rate of star formation (less than one solar mass every twenty years), it was long suspected to be interacting with the Bear's Paw galaxy. This is now considered highly unlikely as observations with the Very Large Array showed the two galaxies lie at different distances.
The NGC 2841 group is a group of galaxies that lie both in Lynx and neighbouring Ursa Major. It includes the loose triplet NGC 2541, NGC 2500, and NGC 2552 within Lynx. Using cepheids of NGC 2541 as standard candles, the distance to that galaxy (and the group) has been estimated at around 40 million light–years. NGC 2841 itself lies in Ursa Major.
NGC 2770 is a type SASc spiral galaxy located about 88 million light–years away that has hosted Type Ib supernovae: SN 1999eh, SN 2007uy, and SN 2008D. The last of these is famous for being the first supernova detected by the X-rays released very early on in its formation, rather than by the optical light emitted during later stages, which allowed the first moments of the outburst to be observed. It is possible that NGC 2770's interactions with a suspected companion galaxy may have created the massive stars causing this activity. UGC 4904 is a galaxy located about 77 million light-years from Earth. On 20 October 2004, a supernova impostor was observed by Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki within the galaxy. Observations of its spectrum suggest that it shed massive amounts of material in a two-year period, transforming from a LBV star to a Wolf–Rayet star, before it was observed erupting as hypernova SN 2006jc on October 11, 2006.
APM 08279+5255 is a very distant, broad absorption line quasar discovered in 1998 and initially considered the most luminous object yet found. It is magnified and split into multiple images by the gravitational lensing effect of a foreground galaxy through which its light passes. It appears to be a giant elliptical galaxy with a supermassive black hole around 23 billion times as massive as the Sun and an associated accretion disk that has a diameter of 3600 light years. The galaxy possesses large regions of hot dust and molecular gas, as well as regions with starburst activity. It has a cosmological redshift of 3.911. While observing the quasar in 2008, astronomers using ESA's XMM Newton and the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona discovered the huge galaxy cluster 2XMM J083026+524133.
The Lynx Supercluster is a remote supercluster with a redshift of 1.26–1.27. It was the most distant supercluster known at the time of its discovery in 1999. It is made up of two main clusters of galaxies—RX J0849+4452 or Lynx E and RX J0848+4453 or Lynx W—and several smaller clumps. Further still lies the Lynx Arc, located around 12 billion light years away (a redshift of 3.357). It is a distant region containing a million extremely hot, young blue stars with surface temperatures of 80,000–100,000 K that are twice as hot as similar stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Only visible through gravitational lensing produced by a closer cluster of galaxies, the Arc is a feature of the early days of the universe, when "furious firestorms of star birth" were more common.
### Meteor showers
The September Lyncids are a minor meteor shower that appears around 6 September. They were historically more prominent, described as such by Chinese observers in 1037 and 1063, and Korean astronomers in 1560. The Alpha Lyncids were discovered in 1971 by Malcolm Currie, and appear between 10 December and 3 January.
## See also
- 88 modern constellations by area
- Asterism (astronomy)
- List of constellations
- Lynx (Chinese astronomy)
- NGC 2798
|
29,032 |
Sega CD
| 1,172,756,063 |
Video game console add-on
|
[
"68k-based game consoles",
"CD-ROM-based consoles",
"Fourth-generation video game consoles",
"Products and services discontinued in 1996",
"Products introduced in 1991",
"Sega Genesis",
"Video game console add-ons"
] |
The Sega CD, also known as in most regions outside North America and Brazil, is a CD-ROM accessory for the Sega Genesis developed and produced by Sega as part of the fourth generation of video game consoles. It was released on December 12, 1991, in Japan, October 15, 1992, in North America, and April 2, 1993, in Europe. The Sega CD plays CD games and adds hardware functionality such as a faster CPU and graphic enhancements such as sprite scaling and rotation. It can also play audio CDs and CD+G discs.
Sega sought to match the capabilities of the competing PC Engine CD-ROM2 System, and added an additional CPU and custom graphics chip. They partnered with JVC to design the Sega CD. Fearful of leaks, Sega refused to consult with Sega of America until the project was complete; Sega of America assembled parts from dummy units to obtain a functioning unit. The Sega CD was redesigned several times by Sega and licensed third parties.
The main benefit of CD technology at the time was greater storage; CDs offered more than 160 times more space than Genesis/Mega Drive cartridges. This benefit manifested as full-motion video (FMV) games such as the controversial Night Trap, which became a focus of the 1993 congressional hearings on issues of video game violence and ratings.
The Sega CD game library features acclaimed games such as Sonic CD, Lunar: The Silver Star, Lunar: Eternal Blue, Popful Mail, and Snatcher, but also many Genesis ports and poorly received FMV games. Only 2.24 million Sega CD units were sold, after which Sega discontinued it to focus on the Sega Saturn. Retrospective reception has been mixed, with praise for some games and functions, but criticism for its lack of deep games and its high price. Sega's poor support for the Sega CD has been criticized as the beginning of the devaluation of its brand.
## History
### Background
Released in 1988, the Genesis (known as the Mega Drive in most territories outside of North America) was Sega's entry into the fourth generation of video game consoles. In the early 1990s, Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske helped make the Genesis a success by cutting the price, developing games for the American market with a new American team, continuing aggressive advertising campaigns, and selling Sonic the Hedgehog with the Genesis as a pack-in game.
By the early 1990s, compact discs (CDs) were making headway as a storage medium for music and video games. NEC had been the first to use CD technology in a video game console with their PC Engine CD-ROM2 System add-on in October 1988 in Japan (launched in North America as the TurboGrafx-CD the following year), which sold 80,000 units in six months. That year, Nintendo announced a partnership with Sony to develop a CD-ROM peripheral for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Commodore International released their CD-based CDTV multimedia system in early 1991, while the CD-i from Philips arrived later that year. According to Nick Thorpe of Retro Gamer, Sega would have received criticism from investors and observers had it not developed a CD-ROM game system.
### Development
Shortly after the release of the Genesis, Sega's Consumer Products Research and Development Labs, led by manager Tomio Takami, were tasked with creating a CD-ROM add-on. It was originally intended to equal the capabilities of the TurboGrafx-CD, but with twice as much random-access memory (RAM). In addition to relatively short loading times, Takami's team planned to implement hardware scaling and rotation similar to that of Sega's arcade games, which required a dedicated digital signal processor. A custom graphics chip would implement these features, alongside an additional sound chip manufactured by Ricoh. According to Kalinske, Sega was ambitious about what CD-ROM technology would do for video games, with its potential for "movie graphics", "rock and roll concert sound" and 3D animation.
However, two major changes were made towards the end of development that dramatically raised the price of the add-on. Because the Genesis' Motorola 68000 CPU was too slow to handle the Sega CD's new graphical capabilities, an additional 68000 CPU was incorporated. This second CPU has a clock speed of 12.5 MHz, faster than the 7.67 MHz CPU in the Genesis. Responding to rumors that NEC planned a memory upgrade to bring the TurboGrafx-CD RAM from 0.5 Mbit to between 2 and 4 Mbit, Sega increased the Sega CD's available RAM from 1 Mbit to 6 Mbit. This proved to be a technical challenge, since the Sega CD's RAM access speed was initially too slow to run programs effectively, and the developers had to focus on increasing the speed. The estimated cost of the device rose to US\$370, but market research convinced Sega executives that consumers would be willing to pay more for a state-of-the-art machine. Sega partnered with JVC, which had been working with Warner New Media to develop a CD player under the CD+G standard.
Sega of America was not informed of the project details until mid-1991. Despite being provided with preliminary technical documents earlier in the year, the American division was not given a functioning unit to test. According to former executive producer Michael Latham, "When you work at a multinational company, there are things that go well and there are things that don't. They didn't want to send us working Sega CD units. They wanted to send us dummies and not send us the working CD units until the last minute because they were concerned about what we would do with it and if it would leak out. It was very frustrating."
Latham and Sega of America vice president of licensing Shinobu Toyoda assembled a functioning Sega CD by acquiring a ROM for the system and installing it in a dummy unit. The American staff were frustrated by the Sega CD's construction. Former senior producer Scot Bayless said: "[It] was designed with a cheap, consumer-grade audio CD drive, not a CD-ROM. Quite late in the run-up to launch, the quality assurance teams started running into severe problems with many of the units—and when I say severe, I mean units literally bursting into flames. We worked around the clock, trying to catch the failure in-progress, and after about a week we finally realized what was happening." He said the problems were caused by the need for games to use more time-seeking data than the CD drive was designed to provide.
### Launch
As early as 1990, magazines were covering a CD-ROM expansion for the Genesis. Sega announced the release of the Mega-CD in Japan for late 1991, and North America (as the Sega CD) in 1992. It was unveiled to the public at the 1991 Tokyo Toy Show, to positive reception from critics, and at the Consumer Electronic Show in Chicago in mid-1991. It was released in Japan on December 12, 1991, initially retailing at JP¥49,800. Though the Mega-CD sold quickly, the small install base of the Mega Drive in Japan meant that sales declined rapidly. Within its first three months, the Mega-CD sold 200,000 units, but only sold an additional 200,000 over the next three years. Third-party game development suffered because Sega took a long time to release software development kits. Other factors affecting sales included the high launch price of the Mega-CD in Japan and only two games available at launch, with only five published by Sega within the first year.
On October 15, 1992, the Mega-CD was released in North America as the Sega CD, with a retail price of US\$299. Advertising included one of Sega's slogans, "Welcome to the Next Level". Though only 50,000 units were available at launch due to production problems, the Sega CD sold over 200,000 units by the end of 1992 and 300,000 by July 1993. As part of Sega's sales, Blockbuster purchased Sega CD units for rental in their stores. Sega of America emphasized that the Sega CD's additional storage space allowed for full-motion video (FMV) games, with Digital Pictures becoming an important partner. After the initial competition between Sega and Nintendo to develop a CD-based add-on, Nintendo canceled development of a CD add-on for the SNES after having partnered with Sony and then Philips to develop one.
The Mega-CD was launched in Europe in April 1993, starting with the United Kingdom on April 2, 1993, at a price of £269.99. The European version was packaged with Sol-Feace and Cobra Command in a two-disc set, along with a compilation CD of five Mega Drive games. Only 70,000 units were initially available in the UK, but 60,000 units were sold by August 1993. The Mega-CD was released in Australia in March 1993. Brazilian toy company Tectoy released the Sega CD in Brazil in October 1993, retaining the North American name despite the use of the name Mega Drive for the base console there.
Sega released a second model, the Sega CD 2 (Mega-CD 2), on April 23, 1993, in Japan. It was released in North America several months later, bundled with one of the bestselling Sega CD games, Sewer Shark. Designed to bring down the manufacturing costs of the Sega CD, the newer model is smaller and does not use a motorized disc tray. A limited number of games were developed that used the Sega CD and another Genesis add-on, the 32X, released in November 1994.
### Night Trap controversy
On December 9, 1993, the United States Congress began hearings on video game violence and the marketing of violent video games to children. The Sega CD game Night Trap, an FMV adventure game by Digital Pictures, was at the center of debate. Night Trap had been brought to the attention of United States Senator Joe Lieberman, who said: "It ends with this attack scene on this woman in lingerie, in her bathroom. I know that the creator of the game said it was all meant to be a satire of Dracula; but nonetheless, I thought it sent out the wrong message." Lieberman's research concluded that the average video game player was between seven and twelve years old, and that video game publishers were marketing violence to children.
In the United Kingdom, Night Trap was discussed in parliament. Former Sega Europe development director Mike Brogan noted that Night Trap brought Sega publicity, and helped reinforce Sega's image as an "edgy company with attitude". Despite the increased sales, Sega recalled Night Trap and rereleased it with revisions in 1994. Following the congressional hearings, video game manufacturers came together in 1994 to establish a unified rating system, the Entertainment Software Rating Board.
### Decline
By the end of 1993, sales of the Sega CD had stalled in Japan and were slowing in North America. In Europe, sales of Mega-CD games were outpaced by games for the Amiga CD32. Newer CD-based consoles such as the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer rendered the Sega CD technically obsolete, reducing public interest. In late 1993, less than a year after the Sega CD had launched in North America and Europe, the media reported that Sega was no longer accepting in-house development proposals for the Mega-CD in Japan. By 1994, 1.5 million units had been sold in the United States and 415,000 in Western Europe. Kalinske blamed the Sega CD's high price for limiting its potential market; Sega attempted to add value in the US and the UK by bundling more games, with some packages including up to five games.
In early 1995, Sega shifted its focus to the Sega Saturn and discontinued advertising for Genesis hardware, including the Sega CD. Sega discontinued the Sega CD in the first quarter of 1996, saying that it needed to concentrate on fewer platforms and that the Sega CD could not compete due to its high price and outdated single-speed drive. According to Thorpe, the Sega CD only reached a more popular price point in 1995, by which time customers were willing to wait for newer consoles. The last scheduled Sega CD games, ports of Myst and Brain Dead 13, were cancelled. 2.24 million Sega CD units were sold worldwide.
## Technical specifications
The Sega CD can only be used in conjunction with a Genesis system, attaching through an expansion slot on the side of the main console. It requires its own power supply. A core feature of the Sega CD is the increase in data storage by its games being CD-ROMs; whereas ROM cartridges of the day typically contained 8 to 16 megabits of data, a CD-ROM disc can hold more than 640 megabytes of data, more than 320 times the storage of a Genesis cartridge. This increase in storage allows the Sega CD to play FMV games. In addition to playing its own library of games in CD-ROM format, the Sega CD can also play compact discs and karaoke CD+G discs, and can be used in conjunction with the 32X to play 32-bit games that use both add-ons. The second model, also known as the Sega CD 2, includes a steel joining plate to be screwed into the bottom of the Genesis and an extension spacer to work with the original Genesis model.
The main CPU of the Sega CD is a 12.5MHz 16-bit Motorola 68000 processor, which runs 5 MHz faster than the Genesis processor. It contains 1 Mbit of boot ROM, allocated for the CD game BIOS, CD player software, and compatibility with CD+G discs. 6 Mbit of RAM is allocated to data for programs, pictures, and sounds; 128 Kbit to CD-ROM data cache memory; and an additional 64 Kbit is allocated as the backup memory. Additional backup memory in the form of a 1 Mbit Backup RAM Cartridge was also available as a separate purchase, released near the end of the system's life. The graphics chip is a custom ASIC, and can perform similarly to the SNES's Mode 7, but with the ability to handle more objects at the same time. Audio is supplied through the Ricoh RF5C164, and two RCA pin jacks allow the Sega CD to output stereophonic sound separate from the Genesis. Combining stereo sound from a Genesis to either version of the Sega CD requires a cable between the Genesis's headphone jack and an input jack on the back of the CD unit. This is not required for the second model of the Genesis. Sega released an additional accessory to be used with the Sega CD for karaoke, including a microphone input and various sound controls.
## Models
Several models of the Sega CD were released. The original model used a front-loading motorized disc tray and sat underneath the Genesis. The second model was redesigned to sit next to the Genesis and featured a top-loading disc tray. Sega also released the Genesis CDX (Multi-Mega in Europe), a combined Genesis and Sega CD, with additional functionality as a portable CD player.
Three additional system models were created by other electronics companies. Working with Sega, JVC released the Wondermega, a combination of the Genesis and Sega CD with high-quality audio, on April 1, 1992, in Japan. The Wondermega was redesigned by JVC and released as the X'Eye in North America in September 1994. Its high price kept it out of the hands of average consumers. Another console, the LaserActive by Pioneer Corporation, can play Genesis and Sega CD games if equipped with the Mega-LD attachment developed by Sega. The LaserActive was positioned to compete with the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, but the combined system and Mega-LD pack retailed at too expensive a price for most consumers. Aiwa released the CSD-GM1, a combination Mega Drive and Mega CD unit built into a boombox. The CSD-GM1 was released in Japan in 1994.
## Games
The Sega CD supports a library of more than 200 games created by Sega and third-party publishers. Six Sega CD games were also released in versions that used both the Sega CD and 32X add-ons.
Well regarded Sega CD games include Sonic CD, Lunar: The Silver Star, Lunar: Eternal Blue, Popful Mail, and Snatcher, as well as the controversial Night Trap. Although Sega created Streets of Rage for the Genesis to compete against the SNES port of the arcade hit Final Fight, the Sega CD received an enhanced version of Final Fight that has been praised for its greater faithfulness to the arcade original. Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side was noted for its impressive use of the Sega CD hardware as well as its violent content. In particular, Sonic CD garnered acclaim for its graphics and time travel gameplay, which improved upon the traditional Sonic formula. The Sega CD also received enhanced ports of Genesis games including Batman Returns and Ecco the Dolphin.
The Sega CD library includes several FMV games. FMV quality was substandard on the Sega CD due to poor video compression software and limited color palette, and the concept never caught on with the public. According to Digital Pictures founder Tom Zito, the Sega CD's limited color palette created "a horrible grainy look". Likewise, most Genesis ports for the Sega CD featured additional FMV sequences, extra levels, and enhanced audio, but were otherwise identical to their Genesis release. The video quality in these sequences has been criticized as comparable to an old VHS tape.
Given a large number of FMV games and Genesis ports, the Sega CD's game library has been criticized for its lack of depth. Kalinske felt this was a valid criticism, and that while it was useful for releasing collections of games, "just doing cartridge games on a CD-ROM was not a step forward". According to Thorpe, the Sega CD's games did not display enough advancement to justify the console price for most consumers. He felt that FMV games, targeted toward more casual players, were not enough to satisfy hardcore players.
## Reception and legacy
Near the time of its release, the Sega CD was awarded Best New Peripheral of 1992 by Electronic Gaming Monthly. Four separate reviews scored the add-on 8, 9, 8, and 8 out of 10; reviewers cited its upgrades to the Genesis as well as its high-quality and expanding library of games. In 1995, four Electronic Gaming Monthly reviewers scored it 5 out of 10, citing its limited game library and substandard video quality. GamePro cited the same problems, noting that many games were simple ports of cartridge games with minimal enhancements; GamePro concluded that the Sega CD was merely "a big memory device with CD sound" rather than a meaningful upgrade. They gave it a "thumbs sideways" and recommended that Genesis fans buy an SNES before considering a Sega CD. In a special Game Machine Cross Review in May 1995, Famicom Tsūshin scored the Japanese Mega-CD 2 17 out of 40.
Retrospective reception of the Sega CD has been mixed, praising certain games but criticizing its value for money and limited upgrades over Genesis. According to GamePro, the Sega CD is the seventh-lowest-selling console; reviewer Blake Snow wrote: "The problem was threefold: the device was expensive at \$299, it arrived late in the 16-bit life cycle, and it didn't do much (if anything) to enhance the gameplay experience." However, Snow felt that the Sega CD had the greatest Sonic game in Sonic CD. IGN'''s Levi Buchanan criticized Sega's implementation of CD technology, arguing that it offered no new gameplay concepts. Jeremy Parish of USgamer wrote that Sega was not the only company of the period to "muddy its waters" with a CD add-on, and highlighted some "gems" for the system, but that "the benefits offered by the Sega CD had to be balanced against the fact that the add-on more than doubled the price (and complexity) of the [Genesis]." In a separate article for 1Up.com, Parish praised the Sega CD's expansion of value to the Genesis. Writing for Retro Gamer, Damien McFerran cited various reasons for the Sega CD's limited sales, including its price, lack of significant enhancement to the Genesis, and the fact that it was not a standalone console. Retro Gamer writer Aaron Birch, defended the Sega CD as "ahead of its time" and said that game developers had failed to meet the potential of CD technology.
Sega's poor support for the Sega CD has been criticized as the first step in the devaluation of the Sega brand. Writing for IGN, Buchanan said the Sega CD, released without a strong library of games, "looked like a strange, desperate move—something designed to nab some ink but without any real, thought-out strategy. Genesis owners that invested in the add-on were sorely disappointed, which undoubtedly helped sour the non-diehards on the brand." In GamePro'', Snow wrote that the Sega CD was the first of several poorly supported Sega systems, which damaged the value of the brand and ultimately led to Sega's exit from the hardware market. Thorpe wrote that, while it was possible for Sega to have brushed off the Sega CD's failure, the failure of the Sega CD and the 32X together damaged faith in Sega's support for its platforms.
Former Sega of America senior producer Scot Bayless attributes the unsuccessful market to a lack of direction from Sega with the add-on. According to Bayless, "It was a fundamental paradigm shift with almost no thought given to consequences. I honestly don't think anyone at Sega asked the most important question: 'Why?' There's a rule I developed during my time as an engineer in the military aviation business: never fall in love with your tech. I think that's where the Mega-CD went off the rails. The whole company fell in love with the idea without ever really asking how it would affect the games you made." Sega of America producer Michael Latham said he "loved" the Sega CD, and that it had been damaged by an abundance of "Hollywood interactive film games" instead of using it to make "just plain great video games". Former Sega Europe president Nick Alexander said: "The Mega CD was interesting but probably misconceived and was seen very much as the interim product it was." Kalinske said that the Sega CD had been an important learning experience for Sega for programming for discs, and that it was not a mistake but not "as dramatically different as it needed to be".
## See also
- 64DD
- Atari Jaguar CD
- Family Computer Disk System
- Virtual Boy
|
7,862,576 |
USS Siboney (ID-2999)
| 1,158,813,438 |
United States Navy troop transport
|
[
"1917 ships",
"Hospital ships of the United States Army",
"Maritime incidents in 1920",
"Maritime incidents in 1928",
"Maritime incidents in 1929",
"Maritime incidents in April 1941",
"Ships built by William Cramp & Sons",
"Ships of American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines",
"Ships of the Ward Line",
"Transport ships of the United States Army",
"World War I auxiliary ships of the United States"
] |
USS Siboney (ID-2999) was a United States Navy troopship in World War I. She was the sister ship of USS Orizaba (ID-1536). Launched as SS Oriente, she was soon renamed after Siboney, Cuba, a landing site of United States forces during the Spanish–American War. After her navy service ended, she was SS Siboney for the New York & Cuba Mail Steamship Co. (commonly called the Ward Line). The ship was operated under charter by American Export Lines beginning in late 1940. During World War II she served the U.S. Army as transport USAT Siboney and as hospital ship USAHS Charles A. Stafford.
As a transport during World War I, Siboney made 17 transatlantic voyages for the navy carrying troops to and from Europe, and had the shortest average in-port turnaround time of all navy transports. During her maiden voyage, her steering gear malfunctioned which resulted in a collision between two other troopships in the convoy.
After her World War I service ended, Siboney was returned to the Ward Line and placed in New York–Cuba–Spain transatlantic service; the liner ran aground at Vigo, Spain in September 1920. Despite considerable damage, she was repaired and placed back in service. In late 1921, Siboney was switched to New York–Cuba–Mexico routes, which were a popular and inexpensive way for Americans to escape Prohibition. In late 1940, she was chartered to American Export Lines to return Americans fleeing Europe at the outset of World War II, making seven roundtrips from Jersey City, New Jersey, to Lisbon.
During World War II, Siboney was requisitioned by the War Shipping Administration (WSA) and assigned to the War Department as a U.S. Army transport. She made several transatlantic trips and called at ports in Africa, the Middle East, Canada, the Caribbean, and the United Kingdom. During a 1944 overhaul, the ship was selected for conversion to a hospital ship. Renamed USAHS Charles A. Stafford after a U.S. Army doctor killed in action in Australia, the ship served in both the European and the Pacific Theatres. After the end of her army service, the ship was laid up in the National Defense Reserve Fleet in February 1948, and sold for scrapping in 1957.
## World War I naval service
Oriente was a combination cargo and passenger ship built by William Cramp & Sons, Philadelphia, for the Ward Line. In mid-1917 the United States Shipping Board (USSB) commandeered and received title to all private shipbuilding projects in progress, including the still-incomplete Oriente and her sister ship Orizaba. Plans for both ships were modified for troop carrying duties. Oriente was launched on 15 August 1917, renamed Siboney on 28 February 1918, delivered to the navy on 8 April, and commissioned the same day.
Siboney sailed from Philadelphia on 16 April as a unit of the Cruiser and Transport Force, and arrived at Newport News two days later to embark her first contingent of troops. She departed Hampton Roads on 23 April and joined her first convoy the following day. On 25 April, her rudder jammed; and, in the ensuing confusion, transports Aeolus and Huron collided and had to return to New York. On 4 May, the convoy was joined by the war zone escort of eight destroyers and, on 6 May, Siboney arrived at Brest. Debarking her troops, she sailed the following day and arrived at Hoboken, New Jersey, on 15 May.
Siboney embarked her second contingent of troops at Lambert's Point, Virginia, on 25 May and sailed the following day. The New York section of the convoy joined two days later and the ships entered the war zone on 6 June. In French waters, they were met by USS Corsair, a squadron of minesweepers, an American dirigible, and two French hydroplanes. Siboney arrived in Bordeaux on 8 June and departed the following day but remained anchored in the mouth of the Gironde until 13 June, awaiting the tanker Woonsocket. On 15 June, the convoy passed six empty lifeboats from the torpedoed transport USS President Lincoln. Siboney entered the American war zone on 20 June, and the next day rescued survivors of the British troopship, Dwinsk, which had been torpedoed three days earlier. The transport arrived at New York on 22 June and anchored in the North River.
Siboney sailed for France on 30 June; after delivering her troops at Brest on 12 July, she returned to New York on 25 July. She sailed again on 31 July. Before arriving at Brest on 12 August, she had to maneuver several times to evade possible submarine contacts. She arrived at New York on 22 August and was given a two-week repair period.
On 4 September, Siboney sailed from New York on her fifth crossing and arrived at Saint-Nazaire nine days later. On 15 September, she embarked a number of wounded troops and left Saint-Nazaire the same day, but, due to heavy submarine activity, swung at anchor for several days before her convoy sailed. She arrived on 29 September at New York. On her sixth eastward crossing, between 6 and 15 October, an influenza epidemic broke out among the troops, killing a number of soldiers. Sailing from Brest on 16 October, the transport returned to New York on 24 October.
Siboney had already embarked troops for her next voyage when, on 3 November, she was ordered to disembark them. She sailed the following day with an army brigadier general and his staff, and a naval draft of 500 men. She arrived at Saint-Nazaire on the 12 November, shortly after the announcement of the Armistice, and was met by a cheering crowd.
Siboney then began her peacetime mission of returning American veterans from Europe to the United States. After embarking 513 wounded men at Saint-Nazaire, she moved to Brest on the 15th and took on 600 more passengers. She sailed the same day under escort and reached New York on 24 November. During the next ten months, Siboney made ten more round trips between the United States and France, returning over 3,000 troops per trip when fully loaded. On one such return trip in August 1919, Siboney carried Admiral Henry T. Mayo and Congressman Thomas S. Butler home from France.
Siboney returned to New York on 2 September at the conclusion of her 17th trip, having traveled over 115,000 nautical miles (213,000 km) and transported approximately 55,000 military passengers to and from French ports. According to the Statistical Department of the U.S. Navy, Siboney had the shortest average in-port turnaround time out of 37 U.S. Navy transports used during World War I. The ship completed 17 round trips and had an average turn-around time of just under 30 days per trip, almost ten days shorter than the average of 39.8 days.
On 10 September at Hoboken, Siboney was decommissioned and turned over to the War Department, who returned the ship to the Ward Line, her original owners.
## Interwar civilian service
After her reacquisition, the Ward Line placed SS Siboney in transatlantic service on a New York to Havana, Tenerife, Bilbao, Santander, and Vigo route. On 9 September 1920, the ship ran aground in the harbor at Vigo. Initial efforts to re-float her were unsuccessful, but by late October, Siboney had been repaired enough to make it to Shields. Despite considerable damage, Siboney was refitted and placed in service again and, by March 1921, the Ward Line was advertising passage to Spain via Havana aboard her. The Ward Line, however, abandoned the New York–Cuba–Spain service later in 1921 due to a lack of passengers.
By November 1921, Siboney was placed in New York–Cuba–Mexico service, where business thrived, in part because of Prohibition in the United States. Ward Line cruises to Havana were one of the quickest and least expensive ways to what one author called "alcohol-enriched vacations". A typical route from this period would sail from New York and call at Nassau, Havana, Progreso, Veracruz, and Tampico, skipping Nassau on the return. Prohibition also had a more direct effect on Siboney and her crew. On 27 June 1922, Siboney—freshly returned from Havana with a load of pineapples—was raided by United States Customs Service inspectors who seized 300 bottles of smuggled liquor on board. In December 1923, four boiler room workers were arrested when police became suspicious of a man who had apparently just delivered a supply of alcohol to the docked ship.
Siboney underwent a major refit in 1924 during which time she was replaced on her routes by SS Yucatán, formerly the North German Lloyd ship Prinz Waldemar. After returning to service for the Ward Line, Siboney was the first to relay messages from Miami about the severity of the Great Miami Hurricane when she passed there shortly after the storm hit in September 1926.
On 18 February 1928, Siboney rammed and sank the coal barge Seneca off Ambrose Light during a snowstorm; the barge had been cut down in 1915 from SS Seneca, coincidentally, a former Ward Line ship. Bad luck continued for Siboney on 5 January 1929, when she rammed and sank the Bauer Towing Company tug Phillip Hoffman off the Battery, killing the tug's engineer.
Siboney continued her same routes into the 1930s, and by 1933 typical runs for Siboney were from New York to Havana, Progreso, and Veracruz and back, omitting Progreso on the return. On one such return trip from Veracruz and Havana in April 1935, a passenger had \$5,000 worth of diamond and platinum jewelry stolen while on board. By 1935, multiple public relations disasters for the Ward Line—the fire and sinking of Morro Castle off New Jersey in 1934 and the grounding of Havana and the sinking of Mohawk in the months that followed—caused the "Ward Line" name to be dropped in favor of the "Cuba Mail Line" moniker. By 1939, Siboney, still on the New York–Cuba–Mexico route, sported a new paint scheme of "dove grey" hull and black funnels with white markings to reflect this change in name. In late 1940, however, the struggling Cuba Mail Line chartered Siboney to American Export Lines which employed her on Jersey City–Lisbon service. During her American Export service, one of her passengers to the U.S. was French aviator and writer Antoine de Saint Exupéry, when he immigrated in January 1941 to Asharoken, New York after Germany’s armistice with France.
On 12 April 1941 at 13:30, 320 nautical miles (590 km) out of Lisbon, the ship—painted with a large American flag and "American Export" lettering on each side—was accosted by "two submarine chasers flying British ensigns" that fired shots over Siboney's bow, one of which landed less than 100 feet (30 m) away from the ship. According to Siboney's captain, Wenzel Habel, the two ships were British corvette types marked "K-25" and "K-125"—which may have been Flower-class corvettes HMS Azalea (K25) and . After answering questions from "K-25" shouted via loudspeaker, Siboney was allowed to resume her course. Habel filed a protest with British officials when Siboney docked at Bermuda.
## World War II Army service
At the conclusion of her seventh and final journey for American Export, Siboney was placed under time charter for duty as an Army transport. After a hasty outfitting, the redesignated USAT Siboney was put to work transporting troops. Based in New York, she made trips up and down the Atlantic and into the Caribbean, and, by the end of 1941, had called at Bermuda, San Juan, Trinidad, St. John's, Charleston, Newport News, Cristóbal, Jamaica, and Panama.
December 1941 saw Siboney depart from New York to Trinidad and on to Cape Town, then sailing up the east coast of Africa to Basra, Iraq, and Bandar Shahpur, Iran. The ship returned to Cape Town via Aden and underwent routine boiler repairs there, before returning to New York in April 1942. After undergoing six weeks of repairs at Bethlehem Steel Company, the transport sailed for Halifax, Iceland, and the Clyde, Scotland, in late May, returning to New York in July. Another trip to England and back followed in September 1942.
On 1 July 1942 the ship had been acquired by the War Shipping Administration (WSA) under a bareboat charter converting the Army's time charter to a sub bareboat charter. On 9 August 1943 WSA purchased the ship with the Army's bareboat charter continued.
In early December 1942 Siboney departed for Newfoundland but put into Halifax for two months of drydocking and repairs after she collided with SS City of Kimberly. After returning to New York in February 1943, she made several transatlantic runs, calling at Casablanca, Oran, Gibraltar, Clyde, Durban, Rio de Janeiro, Trinidad, and Cuba over the next 11 months. Siboney returned to New York for major repairs and reboilering at Bethlehem Steel Co. In January 1944, while undergoing this work, the ship was selected for conversion to a hospital ship.
The ship was renamed USAHS Charles A. Stafford after Captain Charles A. Stafford of the U.S. Army Medical Corps, who was killed during the air raid on Broome, Western Australia, while participating in the evacuation of Java on 3 March 1942. With her conversion complete in September 1944, the Stafford, equipped with new boilers, a single stack in place of her original two, and other improvements, moved to her new homeport of Charleston. From that port the ship made monthly runs to the United Kingdom and back until May 1945, interrupting the pattern only once for a trip to Gibraltar and Marseilles. Steaming to New York at the conclusion of her last transatlantic run, Charles A. Stafford was overhauled for duty in the South Pacific.
With the alterations complete, the veteran ship—now homeported at Los Angeles—sailed in August 1945 for Cristobál and on to Honolulu, Manila, Biak, Leyte, and Mindoro. After returning to Los Angeles in October, the Stafford sailed for Honolulu, Manila, and Eniwetok and back.
After sailing to her new homeport of New York via the Panama Canal during February 1946, Charles A. Stafford resumed her North Atlantic runs to the UK.
On 30 August 1946 the Army transferred the ship to the Maritime Commission. On 16 February 1948 the ship was placed in the James River Reserve Fleet. Kept on reserve under the name Siboney, the ship was sold by the Maritime Administration on 2 January 1957 for \$286,125 to Bethlehem Steel for scrapping.
|
1,191,349 |
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
| 1,170,256,346 |
1918 month-long state in the South Caucasus
|
[
"1918 disestablishments in Asia",
"1918 disestablishments in Europe",
"1918 establishments in Asia",
"1918 establishments in Europe",
"1918 in Armenia",
"1918 in Azerbaijan",
"1918 in Georgia (country)",
"Armenia–Azerbaijan relations",
"Armenia–Georgia (country) relations",
"Azerbaijan–Georgia (country) relations",
"Early Soviet republics",
"Former countries in Europe",
"Former countries in West Asia",
"Former republics",
"Former socialist republics",
"History of Transcaucasia",
"Modern history of Armenia",
"Modern history of Azerbaijan",
"Modern history of Georgia (country)",
"Post–Russian Empire states",
"States and territories disestablished in 1918",
"States and territories established in 1918"
] |
The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR; 22 April – 28 May 1918) was a short-lived state in the Caucasus that included most of the territory of the present-day Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, as well as parts of Russia and Turkey. The state lasted only for a month before Georgia declared independence, followed shortly after by Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The region that formed the TDFR had been part of the Russian Empire. As the empire dissolved during the 1917 February Revolution and a provisional government took over, a similar body, called the Special Transcaucasian Committee (Ozakom), did the same in the Caucasus. After the October Revolution and rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia, the Transcaucasian Commissariat replaced the Ozakom. In March 1918, as the First World War continued, the Commissariat initiated peace talks with the Ottoman Empire, which had invaded the region, but that broke down quickly as the Ottomans refused to accept the authority of the Commissariat. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ended Russia's involvement in the war, conceded parts of the Transcaucasus to the Ottoman Empire, which pursued its invasion to take control of the territory. Faced with this imminent threat, on 22 April 1918 the Commissariat dissolved itself and established the TDFR as an independent state. A legislature, the Seim, was formed to direct negotiations with the Ottoman Empire, which had immediately recognized the state.
Diverging goals of the three major groups (Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians) quickly jeopardized the TDFR's existence. Peace talks again broke down and, facing a renewed Ottoman offensive in May 1918, Georgian delegates in the Seim announced that the TDFR was unable to continue, and declared the Democratic Republic of Georgia independent on 26 May. With the Georgians no longer part of the TDFR, the Republic of Armenia and Azerbaijan Democratic Republic each declared themselves independent on 28 May, ending the federation. Owing to its short existence, the TDFR has been largely ignored in the national historiographies of the region and has been given consideration only as the first stage towards independent states.
## History
### Background
Most of the South Caucasus had been absorbed by the Russian Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century. A Caucasian Viceroyalty had originally been established in 1801 to allow for direct Russian rule, and over the next several decades local autonomy was reduced and Russian control was further consolidated, the Viceroyalty gaining greater power in 1845. Tiflis (now Tbilisi), which had been the capital of the Georgian Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti, became the seat of the viceroy and the de facto capital of the region. The South Caucasus was overwhelmingly rural: aside from Tiflis the only other city of significance was Baku, which grew in the late nineteenth century as the region began exporting oil and became a major economic hub. Ethnically the region was highly diverse. The three major local groups were Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians; Russians had also established themselves after the Russian Empire absorbed the area.
With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the Caucasus became a major theatre, the Russian and Ottoman Empires fighting each other in the region. The Russians won several battles and penetrated deep into Ottoman territory. However, they were concerned that the local population, who were mostly Muslims, would continue to follow the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V and disrupt the Russian forces, as he was also the caliph, the spiritual leader of Islam. Both sides also wanted to use the Armenian population, who lived across the border, to their advantage and foment uprisings. After military defeats, the Ottoman government turned against the Armenians, and initiated a genocide by 1915, in which around 1 million Armenians were killed.
The 1917 February Revolution saw the demise of the Russian Empire and the establishment of a provisional government in Russia. The Viceroy of the Caucasus, Grand Duke Nicholas, initially expressed his support for the new government, yet he was forced to resign his post as imperial power eroded. The provisional government created a new temporary authority, the Special Transcaucasian Committee (known by its Russian abbreviation, Ozakom) on . It was composed of Caucasian representatives to the Duma (Russian legislature) and other local leaders, it was meant to serve as a "collective viceroyalty", and had representatives from the ethnic groups of the region. Much like in Petrograd, a dual power system was established, the Ozakom competing with soviets. With little support from the government in Petrograd, the Ozakom had trouble establishing its authority over the soviets, most prominently the Tiflis Soviet.
### Transcaucasian Commissariat
News of the October Revolution, which brought the Bolsheviks to power in Petrograd on , reached the Caucasus the following day. The Tiflis Soviet met and declared their opposition to the Bolsheviks. Three days later the idea of an autonomous local government was first expressed by Noe Jordania, a Georgian Menshevik, who argued that the Bolshevik seizure of power was illegal and that the Caucasus should not follow their directives, and wait until order was restored. A further meeting of representatives from the Tiflis Soviet, the Ozakom, and other groups on decided to end the Ozakom and replace it with a new body, the Transcaucasian Commissariat, which would not be subservient to the Bolsheviks. Composed of representatives from the four major ethnic groups in the region (Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, and Russians) it replaced the Ozakom as the government of the South Caucasus, and was set to serve in that role until the Russian Constituent Assembly could meet in January 1918. Evgeni Gegechkori, a Georgian, was named the president and Commissar of External Affairs of the Commissariat. The other commissariats were split between Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, and Russians. Formed with the express purpose of being a caretaker government, the Commissariat was not able to govern strongly: it was dependent on national councils, formed around the same time and based on ethnic lines, for military support and was effectively powerless to enforce any laws it passed.
With Russian and Ottoman forces still nominally engaged in the region, a temporary ceasefire, the Armistice of Erzincan, was signed on . With the fighting paused, on , Ottoman diplomats invited the Commissariat to join the peace talks in Brest-Litovsk, where the Bolsheviks were negotiating an end to the war with the Central Powers. As the Commissariat did not want to act independently of Russia, they did not answer the invitation and thus did not participate in the peace talks there. Two days later, on , the Constituent Assembly had its first and only meeting, broken up by the Bolsheviks, thereby effectively consolidating their power in Russia. This confirmed for the Commissariat that they would not be able to work with the Bolsheviks in any serious capacity, and so they began to form a more formal government. The ceasefire between the Ottoman Empire and the Commissariat lasted until , when the Ottoman army launched a new offensive into the Caucasus, claiming it was to retaliate against sporadic attacks by Armenian militias on the Muslim population in occupied Ottoman territory. With Russian forces largely withdrawn from the front, the Commissariat realized that they would not be able to resist a full-scale advance by the Ottoman forces, and so on 23 February agreed to start a new round of peace talks.
### Seim
The idea to establish a Transcaucasian legislative body had been discussed since November 1917, though it had not been acted on at that time. With the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January, it became apparent to the leaders of the Commissariat that ties with Russia had been all but severed. With no desire to follow the lead of the Bolsheviks, the Commissariat agreed to establish their own legislative body so that the Transcaucasus could have a legitimate government and negotiate with the Ottoman Empire more properly. Thus on 23 February they established the "Seim" ("legislature") in Tiflis.
No election was held for the deputies; instead, the results for the Constituent Assembly election were used, the electoral threshold being lowered to one-third of that used for the Constituent Assembly to allow more members to join, which allowed smaller parties to be represented. Nikolai Chkheidze, a Georgian Menshevik, was named the chairman. Ultimately the Seim comprised ten different parties. Three dominated, each representing one major ethnic group: the Georgian Mensheviks and Azerbaijani Musavat party each had 30 members, and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) had 27 members. The Bolsheviks boycotted the Seim, asserting that the only legitimate government for Russia (including Transcaucasia) was the Bolshevik-controlled Council of People's Commissars (known by its Russian acronym, Sovnarkom).
From the outset, the Seim faced challenges to its authority. With a diverse ethnic and political makeup and no clear status to its authority, there was conflict both within its chambers and outside. It was largely dependent on national councils, represented by the three main ethnic groups, and was unable to proceed without their consent. Thus the Ottoman offer to renew peace talks and a willingness to meet in Tiflis, where the Seim was based, was refused, as the Seim felt it would only showcase the internal disagreements taking place. Instead they agreed to travel to Trabzon, in northeast Anatolia.
### Trabzon peace conference
A delegation representing the Seim was scheduled to depart for Trabzon on 2 March, but that day it was announced that the peace talks at Brest-Litovsk had concluded, and the Russians would sign a peace treaty. Contained within the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was the agreement that the Russians would give up large swaths of land to the Ottoman Empire, including major regions in the Transcaucasus: the territories of Ardahan, Batum Oblast, and Kars Oblast, all of which had been annexed by Russia after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. With this sudden development, the delegation postponed leaving as they had to reconsider their stance. As the Transcaucasus had not been part of the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, they sent messages to several governments around the world, stating as they were not a party in the peace talks they would not honor the treaty and would not evacuate the territories. The delegation would finally depart on 7 March and arrive at Trabzon the next day. On arrival, the delegation, comprising ten delegates and another fifty guards, was held up as the guards were asked to disarm. The unusually large delegation was made up of individuals selected to represent the diverse ethnic groups and political factions that composed the Seim; on their arrival an Ottoman official quipped that "[i]f this was the entire population of Transcaucasia, it was indeed very small; if, however, it was only a delegation, it was much too large."
While the delegates waited for the conference in Trabzon to begin, the head of the Ottoman Third Army, Vehib Pasha, sent a request on 10 March to Evgeny Lebedinskii [ru], a former Russian general who had begun to follow orders from the Commissariat, to evacuate the Ardahan, Batum, and Kars areas, as stipulated by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Vehib also told Ilia Odishelidze, who was also taking orders from the Commissariat, that in light of attacks by Armenian forces on the population near Erzurum, Ottoman forces would have to advance to keep the peace, warning that any hostile reply would be met with force. These requests were replied to directly by Chkheidze as Chairman of the Seim, who noted that the Transcaucasus had sent a delegation to Trabzon to negotiate peace, and that as the Seim no longer recognized Russian authority they would not acknowledge the provisions of Brest-Litovsk. On 11 March the Ottoman army began their attack on Erzurum and with little hope for success, the mostly Armenian defenders evacuated less than twenty-four hours later.
The Trabzon Peace Conference opened on 14 March. At the first session, the lead Ottoman delegate, Rauf Bey, asked the Transcaucasian delegation whom they represented. Akaki Chkhenkeli, the head of the Transcaucasian delegation, was unable to give a proper response as it was not clear to him or his associates who they represented. When the question was repeated two days later, Rauf also asked Chkhenkeli to clarify the make-up of their state, to determine if it qualified as one under international law. Chkhenkeli clarified that since the October Revolution, the central authority had ceased to exist in Transcaucasia. An independent government had been formed and that since it had acted like a state when it discussed the invitation to the Brest-Litovsk peace talks, it qualified as a sovereign state, even if independence had not been explicitly proclaimed. Rauf refuted the argument, asserting that the Sovnarkom had authority over all of Russia and even though Ottoman representatives had sent messages to the Commissariat to join the talks at Brest-Litovsk, that did not confer recognition. Finally, Rauf stated that the Ottoman delegation was at Trabzon only to resolve some economic and commercial issues that had not been settled at Brest-Litovsk. Chkhenkeli and his fellow delegates had little option but to request a short recess so they could message the Seim and determine how to proceed.
## Formation
### Renewed Ottoman invasion
During the recess at Trabzon, the Ottoman forces continued their advance into the Transcaucasian territory, crossing the 1914 border with the Russian Empire by the end of March. The Seim debated the best course of action; a majority of the delegates favored a political solution. On 20 March the Ottoman delegates offered that the Seim could only return to negotiations if they declared independence, thereby confirming that Transcaucasus was no longer part of Russia. The idea of independence had arisen before, the Georgians having discussed it in depth in preceding years; it was decided against as the Georgian leadership felt the Russians would not approve it and the Menshevik political ideology leaned away from nationalism.
By 5 April, Chkhenkeli accepted the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk as a basis for further negotiations and urged the Transcaucasian Seim to accept this position. He initially asked that Batum remain part of the Transcaucasus, arguing that as the major port in the region it was an economic necessity. The Ottomans refused the proposal, making it clear that they would only accept the terms of Brest-Litovsk, to which Chkhenkeli conceded. Acting on his own accord, on 9 April Chkhenkeli agreed to negotiate further based on the terms set out, though requested that representatives from the other Central Powers participate in the talks. Rauf replied that such a request could only be considered if the Transcaucasus were an independent state.
Tired of fruitless negotiations and realizing that the contested territories could be occupied by force, Ottoman officials issued an ultimatum to the defenders in Batum, ordering it evacuated by 13 April. While Chkhenkeli was receptive to the loss of Batum, recognizing its importance but accepting that it was part of the terms at Brest-Litovsk, the Georgian members of the Seim were adamant about keeping the city, Gegechkori noting that it could be defended quite easily. Irakli Tsereteli, a Georgian Menshevik, gave an impassioned speech calling for the defense of the city and asked the Seim to denounce the Brest-Litovsk treaty altogether. Armenian delegates had long been in support of fighting the Ottoman Empire, a response to the 1915 genocide and continued attacks on Armenian civilians, while only the Azerbaijanis resisted going to war, as they were reluctant to fight fellow Muslims. Azerbaijanis were outvoted and on 14 April the Seim declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Immediately after the voting finished, Tsereteli and Jordania left to join the defense of Batum, while the delegation in Trabzon was ordered to return to Tiflis immediately. Some Azerbaijani delegates defied this order and remained there, seeking potential negotiation, though nothing came of this.
### Establishment
The military superiority of the Ottoman forces became apparent right away. They occupied Batum on 14 April, with little resistance. They also attacked Kars, but a force of 3,000 Armenian soldiers, with artillery support, held the city until it was evacuated on 25 April. Having captured most of their claimed territory and unwilling to lose more soldiers, the Ottoman delegates offered another truce on 22 April and waited for the Transcaucasians to reply.
In the face of Ottoman military superiority, the Georgian National Council decided that the only option was for Transcaucasia to declare itself an independent state. The idea was debated in the Seim on 22 April, the Georgians leading the debate, noting that the Ottoman representatives had agreed to resume peace talks provided that the Transcaucasus would meet them as an independent state. The choice to move forward was not unanimous initially: the mostly Armenian Dashnaks felt that the best option at the time was to stop the Ottoman military's advance, though they were reluctant to give up so much territory, while the Musavats, who represented Azerbaijani interests, were still hesitant to fight fellow Muslims, but conceded that independence was the only way to ensure the region would not be divided by foreign states. The only major opposition came from the Socialist Revolutionary Party, when one of their representatives, Lev Tumanov [ru], argued that the people of Transcaucasia did not support such an action. He also argued that while the Musavats claimed their driving force was "conscience not fear", it was in reality "fear and not conscience". He concluded that they would all regret this act.
When the debate finished, Davit Oniashvili, an ethnic Georgian Menshevik, proposed the motion for the Seim "to proclaim Transcaucasia an independent democratic federative republic". Some deputies left the chamber as they did not want to vote in favor of the matter, so the motion passed with few dissents. The new republic, the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR), immediately sent a message to Vehib Pasha announcing this development and expressing their will to accept the provisions of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and surrendered Kars to the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire recognized the TDFR on 28 April. Despite this recognition, the Ottomans continued their advance into Transcaucasian territory and shortly after occupied both Erzerum and Kars.
### Independence
Upon its establishment, the TDFR had no cabinet to lead the new government. The Commissariat had been dissolved when independence was declared, and Gegechkori refused to continue in a leadership position, feeling he had lost support to do so. Though it had been agreed during the Seim debates that Chkhenkeli would take up the role of prime minister, he refused to serve in a caretaker position until a new cabinet could be formed. The cabinet was not finalized until 26 April, so for three days the TDFR effectively had no executive. With pressing needs to attend to, Chkhenkeli took up his role as prime minister. He ordered the Armenian forces to cease fighting and also requested Vehib to meet him for peace negotiations in Batum, the location deliberately chosen so that he could travel to Tiflis if necessary, something that was not possible from Trabzon.
Upset at Chkhenkeli's actions over the previous days, namely the evacuation of Kars, the Dashnaks initially refused to join the cabinet. They negotiated with the Mensheviks but relented when the latter warned they would only support Chkhenkeli or Hovhannes Kajaznuni, an Armenian. The Mensheviks knew that electing Kajaznuni would give the perception that the TDFR intended to keep fighting to defend Armenian territory, and it was feared that this would see the Azerbaijanis leave the federation and make it easier for Ottoman forces to threaten the rest of Armenia, a proposition the Dashnaks were not eager to endorse. The cabinet was confirmed by the Seim on 26 April, consisting of thirteen members. Chkhenkeli, aside from being prime minister, assumed foreign minister's office, the remaining positions being split among Armenians (four), Azerbaijanis (five), and Georgians (three). Azerbaijanis and Georgians took up the leading positions in the cabinet, an act that historian Firuz Kazemzadeh said revealed as "the relationship of forces in Transcaucasia" at the time. In his inaugural address to the Seim, Chkhenkeli announced that he would work to ensure all citizens had equality and to establish borders for the TDFR that were based on agreement with their neighbors. He further laid out a platform with five main points: write a constitution; delineate borders; end the war; combat counter-revolution and anarchy; and land reform.
A new peace conference was convened at Batum on 11 May, with both Chkhenkeli and Vehib in attendance. Before the conference, Chkhenkeli repeated his request to have the other Central Powers present, which the Ottoman delegates ignored. Both sides invited observers: the TDFR brought a small German contingent, led by General Otto von Lossow, while the Ottoman delegates had representatives from the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus, an unrecognized state they were backing. Chkhenkeli wished to proceed on the basis of the Brest-Litovsk terms, but this was refused by the Ottoman delegation, led by Halil Bey, the Ottoman minister of justice. Halil Bey argued that as the two states were in conflict, the Ottoman would no longer recognize Brest-Litovsk and instead presented Chkhenkeli with a duly prepared draft treaty.
The treaty contained twelve articles which called for the Ottoman Empire to be ceded not only the oblasts of Kars and Batum, but also the uezds of Akhalkalaki, Akhaltsikhe, Surmalu, and large parts of the Alexandropol, Erivan, and Etchmiadzin, mainly along the course of the Kars–Julfa railway. The territory named would effectively bring all of Armenia into the Ottoman Empire. The railway was desired as the Ottoman forces sought a fast route to North Persia, where they were fighting the British forces in the Persian Campaign, though historian Richard G. Hovannisian has suggested that the real reason was to allow them a means to reach Baku and access the oil production around the city.
Giving the TDFR several days to consider their options, the Ottoman forces resumed their military advances into Armenia on 21 May. They engaged the Armenians at the battles of Bash Abaran, Sardarapat and Kara Killisse, but could not defeat the Armenians decisively. As a result, their advance slowed down, and eventually, they were forced to retreat.
## Dissolution
### German intervention
By 22 May the Ottoman forces, split into two groups, were 40 km (25 mi) from Erevan and 120 km (75 mi) from Tiflis. With this threat, the TDFR reached out to Von Lossow and the Germans in hopes of securing their help and protection. Von Lossow had previously offered to mediate between the TDFR and the Ottoman Empire on 19 May, though this had not led to any progress. While the German and Ottoman Empires were nominally allies, the relationship had deteriorated in the preceding months, as the German public had not approved of reports that the Ottoman government was massacring Christians, nor did the German government appreciate the Ottoman army's advance into territory not agreed to at Brest-Litovsk. The Germans also had their own strategic interests in the Caucasus: they wanted both a potential path to attack British India and access to raw materials in the region, both of which could be blocked by the Ottomans.
With the Armenians fighting the Ottoman forces and the Azerbaijanis having their own issues with Bolsheviks controlling Baku, the Georgians concluded that they had no future in the TDFR. On 14 May Jordania went to Batum to request German assistance to help secure Georgian independence. He returned to Tiflis on 21 May and expressed confidence that Georgia could become independent. The Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian representatives from the Seim met on 21 May to discuss the future of the TDFR and agreed that it was not likely to last much longer. The next day the Georgians met alone and resolved that independence was their only logical choice. Jordania and Zurab Avalishvili drafted a declaration of independence on 22 May, before Jordania left again for Batum to meet Von Lossow. On 24 May Von Lossow replied that he was only authorized to work with the TDFR as a whole; as it was becoming apparent that it would not last long, he would have to leave Trabzon and consult with his government on how to proceed further.
### Break-up
On 26 May Tsereteli gave two speeches in the Seim. In the first, he explained that the TDFR was unable to continue as there was a lack of unity among the people and that ethnic strife led to a division of action in regards to the Ottoman invasion. In his second speech, Tsereteli blamed the Azerbaijanis for failing to support the defense of the TDFR and declared that as the federation had failed it was time for Georgia to proclaim itself independent. At 15:00 the motion was passed: "Because on the questions of war and peace there arose basic differences among the peoples who had created the Transcaucasian Republic, and because it became impossible to establish one authoritative order speaking in the name of all Transcaucasia, the Seim certifies the fact of the dissolution of Transcaucasia and lays down its powers." Most delegates left the chamber, leaving only the Georgians, who were shortly joined by members of the Georgian National Council. Jordania then read the Georgian declaration of independence and proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Georgia. This was followed two days later with an Armenian declaration of independence, followed quickly by Azerbaijan doing the same, creating the Republic of Armenia and Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, respectively. All three newly independent states signed a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire on 4 June, effectively ending that conflict. Armenia then later engaged in brief wars with both Azerbaijan (1918–1920) and Georgia (December 1918) to determine its final borders.
## Legacy
As the TDFR lasted only a month, it has had a limited legacy, and the historical scholarship on the topic is limited. Historians Adrian Brisku and Timothy K. Blauvelt have noted that it "seemed both to the actors at the time and to later scholars of the region to be unique, contingent, and certainly unrepeatable." Stephen F. Jones stated it was "the first and last attempt at an independent Transcaucasian union", while Hovannisian noted that the actions of the TDFR during its short existence demonstrated that it "was not independent, democratic, federative, or a republic".
Under Bolshevik rule, the three successor states would be forcibly reunited within the Soviet Union as the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. This state lasted from 1922 to 1936 before being broken up again into three union republics: the Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian Soviet Socialist Republics. Within the modern states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, the TDFR is largely ignored in their respective national historiography, given consideration only as the first stage towards their own independent states.
## Government
### Cabinet
|
53,900,753 |
My Man (Tamar Braxton song)
| 1,169,934,363 | null |
[
"2010s ballads",
"2017 singles",
"2017 songs",
"Contemporary R&B ballads",
"Songs about heartache",
"Songs about infidelity",
"Songs written by Cory Rooney",
"Songs written by Tamar Braxton",
"Soul ballads",
"Tamar Braxton songs",
"Torch songs"
] |
"My Man" is an R&B and soul song recorded by American singer Tamar Braxton for her fifth studio album Bluebird of Happiness (2017). Braxton and Cory Rooney wrote the song, which was produced by Bob Robinson. It was released for digital download and streaming on April 27, 2017, as the album's lead single. "My Man" was the first single from Braxton's independent record label, Tamartian Land, created with the support of eOne Entertainment.
The song's lyrics concern infidelity and were based on Braxton's parents and their divorce after her father's affair. Braxton wrote the song from her mother's perspective on the relationship. Describing "My Man" as her most personal song, Braxton used one of her past relationships as additional inspiration.
Critics considered "My Man" as one of the highlights of Bluebird of Happiness and praised Braxton's vocals. The song peaked at No. 3 on Billboard's Adult R&B Songs chart and No. 21 on the Hot R&B Songs chart. "My Man" was featured on an episode of the reality television series Braxton Family Values. Braxton's performance at the BET Awards 2017 was praised as one of the event's highlights, although some critics believed she was lip syncing. Laurieann Gibson directed the music video, which features Braxton confronting her lover and his mistress in a hotel room.
## Background and release
Tamar Braxton co-wrote "My Man" with Cory Rooney for her fifth studio album Bluebird of Happiness (2017). The song was produced by Bob Robinson, who worked with Braxton on her eponymous debut album in 2000. Braxton based "My Man" on her parents' marriage and their divorce following her father's infidelity. While developing the lyrics, she imagined her mother's perspective to convey her emotions "as a woman and not just as [a] mom".
Additional inspiration came from one of Braxton's past relationships that caused her to question her self-worth. According to Braxton, the single was written and recorded quickly; she explained that it "just rolled out of me". She identified "My Man" as her most personal song and said the single and overall album was "the first time you see an X-ray vision of Tamar and everything I've been through". Braxton co-wrote every song on Bluebird of Happiness.
Prior to the song's release, Braxton had played it for her father, whom she told that she had forgiven for his past affair. He was initially flattered that she wrote a song about him, although he did not pay attention to the lyrics. "My Man" premiered in late April 2017 on Braxton Family Values, a reality television series about the five Braxton sisters (Toni, Traci, Towanda, Trina, and Tamar). In Entertainment Tonight, Latifah Muhammad said Braxton's frank discussion about her parents' divorce and her current relationship with them showed how the Braxton family include "some tough moments on camera for their reality show".
Braxton released "My Man" on April 27, 2017, as the album's lead single for digital download and streaming. The single was sent to urban radio stations on July 18, 2017. It was the only song on Bluebird of Happiness to be marked for explicit content. "My Man" was the first song from Braxton's independent record label, which she created in partnership with eOne Entertainment. She left Epic Records, which released three of her albums, to have more control over her career. When discussing this decision, Braxton said she was happy about not having to "sell people on things that I want to do". For the release of "My Man", Braxton named her label Tamartian Land, a reference to her fans' nickname as "Tamartians". The name changed to Logan Land for Bluebird of Happiness as a reference to her son, Logan.
## Music and lyrics
"My Man" is an R&B and soul ballad, performed in the style of a slow jam and a torch song. The album version of the song lasts four minutes and eleven seconds, and a radio edit version shortens it by twenty-four seconds. In an Uproxx article, Elias Leight cited the single as an example of how R&B music uses "updates of the Southern soul sound", and in Rolling Stone, he said it "draws on a long line of fraught, theatrical soul ballads". Critics described its overall tone as sad, especially when compared to the more upbeat composition of "Pick Me Up", another track from Bluebird of Happiness.
The lyrics for "My Man" are about infidelity; Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times said its central message was "never trust a lonely woman with the one you love". Vibe'''s Da’Shan Smith described the lyrics as "suspiciously auto-biographical" for Braxton. Discussing the first verse, "Stood right by your side through everything that you went through...Why is she around", SoulTracks' Justin Kantor compared Tamar's voice to her sister Toni Braxton's "rich low alto". For the lyrics, "Is this my life? It cuts me like a knife", Kantor described Braxton as "belting grittily on the higher end of the scale".
The chorus is "I don't want to hear no bullshit stories about my man, I just can't believe that you're with her / I just can't believe she stole my man", which is the moment Rap-Up's Andres said Braxton "breaks it all down" for the listener. At one point, Braxton refers to her man's mistress as a "heifer", which critics said added more emotion to the song; the Los Angeles Times' Libby Hill viewed this moment as a highlight: "It's really the heifer aside that seals the deal in the fiery torch song about a man who done her wrong."
## Reception
Critics ranked "My Man" as one of the highlights of Bluebird of Happiness. AllMusic's Andy Kellman wrote that the album "crest[ed] with the two-timed belter" and its final track "Empty Boxes". In the Houston Chronicle, Joey Guerra praised "My Man", along with "Blind", "How I Feel", and "Empty Boxes", as "searing, tear-your-heart-out ballads". Arielle Chester from We TV said the lyrics were relatable, calling the song "the next best break-up remedy since ice cream". In an article about the 60th Annual Grammy Awards nominations, Da’Shan Smith said "My Man" was snubbed. Braxton's vocals were the subject of praise. Justin Kantor commended her for conveying the song's varying emotions, and Andres highlighted her ability to express the "heartache of deception" with her voice.
"My Man" peaked at number three on the Adult R&B Songs Billboard chart for the week of August 19, 2017, and stayed on the chart for 22 weeks. The song reached number 21 on the Hot R&B Songs Billboard chart for the week of August 26, 2017. According to the Houston Chronicle, the single was successful on adult R&B stations. However, Elias Leight said although songs like "My Man" are popular on R&B radio, they are never able to crossover to be played on pop radio or in feature films.
## Music video and live performance
The music video for "My Man" was released on June 25, 2017. Filmed in black and white by Laurieann Gibson, it depicts Braxton confronting her lover and his mistress over his infidelity. After finding her lover's hotel room, Braxton sees him in bed with another woman. She pushes the mistress to the bathroom floor before confronting him, taking back her coat, and leaving the hotel. Devin from Rap-Up believed a future music video would continue the story. The video's production was shown in a docuseries focused on Gibson's creative process.
Braxton performed "My Man" on the BET Awards 2017 accompanied by back-up dancers. She had a band, but she performed the song without a backing track. Critics praised the performance as one of the award show's highlights. Mikael Wood said that it added energy to the event, which was criticized as having technical and pacing issues. Describing Braxton as a "glorious drama queen", Elias Leight enjoyed her "series of well-honed, highly dramatic gestures"; he wrote that "the force of her stagecraft" kept the attention on her rather than the dancers. In an article for Billboard, Dan Rys praised Braxton's vocals and highlighted her mic drop as a "fitting exclamation point" to the performance.
Despite this positive response, Twitter users believed Braxton was lip syncing; Michael Arceneaux also thought this and jokingly asked why she kept "aggressively moving her wig like it was dipped in a fire ant bed before she glued it to her head". During an appearance on the game show Hip Hop Squares, Braxton had an argument with host DeRay Davis when he joked that she had lip-synced for the BET performance. Lil Mama, one of the episode's celebrity contestants, had informed Braxton about the joke since she did not hear it the first time. In an interview with the radio show The Breakfast Club, Braxton said she is close friends with Davis and that Lil Mama "needs the spirit of the hush sometimes".
## Credits and personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Bluebird of Happiness''.
- Songwriting – Tamar Braxton, Cory Rooney
- Production – Bob Robinson
## Charts
## Release history
|
60,055,465 |
Robert Kaske
| 1,173,903,480 |
American medieval literature professor (1921–1989)
|
[
"1921 births",
"1989 deaths",
"20th-century American historians",
"20th-century American male writers",
"American medievalists",
"Cornell University faculty",
"Deaths from brain cancer in the United States",
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"Historians from Ohio",
"Military personnel from Cincinnati",
"United States Army personnel of World War II",
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Robert Earl Kaske (June 1, 1921 – August 8, 1989) was an American professor of medieval literature. He spent most of his career at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he was the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, and where he founded one of the preeminent medieval studies graduate programs in North America. His published output included lengthy interpretations of Beowulf, and of poems and passages by Dante and Chaucer, and frequently constituted leading studies. Kaske particularly enjoyed solving cruxes, with articles on problematic passages in works such as Pearl, Piers Plowman, the Divine Comedy, The Husband's Message, The Descent into Hell, and Beowulf.
Born in Cincinnati and a straight-A student in high school, Kaske studied liberal arts at Xavier University and joined a variety of student literary organizations there. He was a four-year member of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, and was commissioned a second lieutenant before his 1942 graduation; much of the next four years was spent with the Army in the South Pacific during World War II. While there he read a story about a dusk-to-dawn conversation between two professors and, entranced by the prospect of such intellectual discussions, decided on an academic career. Kaske enrolled in the English literature program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) on the back of the G.I. Bill, received his master's in 1947, and his PhD in 1950.
From 1950 to 1963 Kaske held posts at Washington University in St. Louis, Pennsylvania State University, UNC, and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, rising from lecturer to full professor along the way; he termed his departure from UNC as the time he "published himself out of paradise". A visiting professorship at Cornell in 1963 became permanent in 1964, and Kaske remained at the university for the rest of his life.
A popular and "Falstaffian" professor, Kaske, along with the medieval studies program he founded, was credited by colleagues with producing the backbone of the discipline's next scholastic generation. His editorial imprint was visible in the works of many, including former students and those who submitted papers to the journal Traditio, which he edited. Over the course of his career he collected what one former student termed "most of the awards and honors possible for a medieval scholar", including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, and two Guggenheim Fellowships.
## Early life and education
Robert Kaske, who went by Bob, was born on June 1, 1921 in Cincinnati, Ohio. His parents were Herman C. Kaske, a postal clerk with the United States Postal Service, and Ann Rose Kaske ( Laake). Robert Kaske attended St. Martin's, a Catholic elementary school, and later the boys prep school Elder High School, where he received straight As across four years of English, Latin, and religion, and missed only a single day of school. While there he worked on the school newspaper and the yearbook, won the school's Latin contest, and played baseball; he graduated from the modern English course in 1938. In a yearbook filled with humorous projected jobs for the graduates, such as "dog-catcher" and "pretzel-twister", Kaske was an exception: "Robert Kaske, Editor."
After graduating from high school, Kaske matriculated at Xavier University, where he studied the liberal arts. Kaske was a four-year member of the Heidelberg Club, which described itself as intended "to further interest in the language, culture, history and transitions of the Germanic peoples". In his sophomore year Kaske began a three-year stint with the Xavier University News, writing the column "Quid Ergo?" Taken from Seneca, the Latin name of the column meant "So what?"; Kaske described his topics as "touching on literature, politics, philosophy, economics, history, school affairs, slapstick, slapstick and slapstick", and involving "a schoolboy telling the world what is wrong with it".
That year he also joined The Athenaeum and the Mermaid Tavern, an undergraduate literary paper and literary club, respectively. He became editor in chief of the former his senior year, and "Host" of the latter. Kaske still spoke fondly of the Mermaid Tavern, where students presented their literary works and discussed those of the masters, in his later years. As a junior, a year in which he was inducted into the Jesuit academic honorary fraternity Alpha Sigma Nu, he joined the Masque Society, a theatrical group; he played Peter Dolan in a school production of Father Malachy's Miracle that year, and as a senior appeared in another play, Whispering in the Dark. Between his junior and senior years, Kaske spent much of the summer writing radio scripts. Also as a senior Kaske cofounded the Philosophy Club, a society for students interested in philosophical research, and joined The Traditionists, a literary club which that year devoted their meetings to reading Dante's Inferno. He placed sixth or seventh in an intercollegiate writing contest the same year. Kaske graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts on June 3, 1942.
### World War II
Kaske had joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps in his first semester at Xavier, and even before his graduation was ordered to active service. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army's field artillery on May 25, 1942, and ordered to report to Fort Thomas for a physical examination and assignment, with a furlough to account for his June commencement. Speaking to Kaske and 24 others, the commencement speaker, Archbishop John T. McNicholas, stated "[m]ay I assure the Second Lieutenants of this graduating class that the Archdiocese of Cincinnati is proud of them. It is happy to know that Xavier University is not only teaching theoretical patriotism, but that it is actually serving our country in the greatest crisis in its history."
Kaske served as a platoon leader and company commander with the 819th Tank Destroyer Battalion, taking him to ports in the United States, Hawaii (including Black Sand Beach), the Palau Islands (Peleliu and Angaur), and the Mariana Islands (Guam and Saipan). During a leave at the end of 1943, while stationed at Fort Hood, he served as a best man at a wedding in Cleburne, Texas, took out his own marriage license a week later, and married in January. His wife was Mildred Mae Reinerman, a 21-year-old bookkeeper. But the leave was short and in March 1944 Kaske's battalion departed California aboard the USS General G. O. Squier, headed for Hawaii. By 1945, Kaske was in Peleliu, where the 819th searched for remaining Japanese soldiers, defended the airstrip, and shelled Japanese-held islands. Kaske was discharged from the Army on June 1, 1946, having risen to the rank of first lieutenant.
### Graduate studies
As a student at Xavier, Kaske had anticipated a business career, possibly in advertising. That changed while filling time at the end of the war on a coral island in the Pacific, when he read a story about two professors engrossed in conversation from dusk to dawn; as the sun rose, one professor regretfully said he needed to prepare for class, and the other replied that he had been so absorbed he forgot he was not in his own house. Entranced by the prospect of such engaging intellectual conversations and aided by the tuition benefits afforded veterans by the G.I. Bill, Kaske set out for an academic life.
After talking it over with Father Paul Sweeney, a professor of English at Xavier and founder and patron of the Mermaid Tavern, Kaske entered the English literature program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in 1946. As at Xavier, Kaske wrote for a student paper, Factotum, including poems, and at least one short story: "Sergeant Hinchey's Homecoming", about a veteran regaling an unsuspecting church group with ribald tales from service in Hawaii, Angaur, Texas, and Kwajalein. Under the direction of Hardin Craig, Kaske wrote his Master's thesis on George Chapman's tragedies, receiving his degree in 1947. If not for Craig's departure to the University of Missouri, wrote the medieval scholar (and former Kaske student) Emerson Brown Jr., Kaske might have become a Renaissance scholar. Instead, under George Coffman's direction, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the Late Medieval poem Piers Plowman and graduated in 1950.
## Career
Kaske was hired as an English instructor at Washington University in St. Louis by April 1950, before his June dissertation defense. He began teaching a variety of courses in medieval language and literature, including studies of Dante. At Washington, Kaske found the intellectual engagement he had been looking for, including with colleagues Vladimir Jelinek and Ernst Abrahamson. He also began to publish, with articles on Piers Plowman in each of 1951, 1952, and 1957. In 1952 he was promoted to assistant professor, and in 1955 he was awarded a research grant for study during the summer.
Kaske left Washington University in 1957, then taught at Pennsylvania State University from 1957 to 1958. He left Pennsylvania to return to his alma mater UNC, where he began his associate professorship on September 1, 1958. An article on the epic poem Beowulf was published in the university's journal Studies in Philology shortly before his arrival, followed in 1959 by another article on Piers Plowman. A year later, Kaske was awarded a grant by the American Council of Learned Societies to work on a book, provisionally titled The Heroic Ideal in Old English Poetry. In 1961 Kaske was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study heroism and the hero in Old English poetry, and served as secretary of the Modern Language Association's Middle English group. Kaske enjoyed packed classes and the esteem of his colleagues at UNC, but soon began receiving attractive offers from other institutions. After three years Kaske left for the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he was hired as a tenured full professor on September 1, 1961, with a starting annual salary of ; he would henceforth term this move the time he "published himself out of paradise".
### Cornell
In the fall semester of 1963, Kaske, who later admitted he was "looking around" and anxious to leave Illinois, took a six-month visiting professorship at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The following year, Cornell made an offer for a permanent position, which Kaske accepted; he remained there for the rest of his life. In 1968—a year in which he was first listed in Who's Who in America—Kaske was awarded another grant by the American Council of Learned Societies, this time to travel to England and search for the sources of imagery in poems by the unknown Gawain Poet. Another grant by the organization followed in 1971, for further research into the heroic ideal in Old English poetry, and that year Kaske participated in a symposium on Geoffrey Chaucer held at the University of Georgia. During 1972–73 he was a Faculty Fellow of the university's Society for the Humanities, and in 1974 he was named the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, succeeding Herbert Dieckmann [de]. In 1975, he was appointed chief editor of the journal Traditio, and in 1977, he again won a Guggenheim Fellowship, this time to undertake research on the sources and methodology for the interpretation of medieval imagery. In 1984–85, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded Kaske a Fellowship for Independent Study and Research; he intended to use it to complete a manual for scholars of medieval literature. As part of the fellowship Kaske directed a seminar on "Latin Christian Tradition in Medieval Literature", which presented the material from the book Kaske was working on.
At Cornell, Kaske founded a medieval studies graduate program, which Old English scholar Fred C. Robinson said came to become "one of the great seminaries of medieval scholars in North America during the latter part of the twentieth century". The program required all medieval literature students to take courses and intensive examinations in at least four medieval languages and literatures, and to have or learn French, German, and classical and medieval Latin, in addition to two semesters of Latin palaeography; some "survivors" termed it the "Parris Island of medieval studies". Just Kaske's introduction to medieval studies, a semester-long seminar, drew students from Yale and other universities, while the overall program, his colleagues said, "produced a group of scholars who have become the backbone of the next generation in medieval studies, and who, in their collective achievement and their dedication to the pedagogical and scholarly ideals of their mentor, constitute Bob's true monument".
Kaske was known for his loyalty to his students, and his love of learning and teaching. Kaske was described as a "Falstaffian figure", and popular with students. "If we were students all of the time," Brown wrote, "Robert Kaske was a teacher all of the time." Students would frequently drop by Kaske's house unannounced to seek his input, bibliographic references, or access to his rich library, which Kaske amassed over the years despite his modest background and academic salary. Even once graduated, Kaske would continue to edit students' drafts; meanwhile, he "even turned the letter of recommendation into an art form".
Around 1960, Kaske joined a panel discussion in which he defended patristic learning—the study of early Christian writers—as a way of interpreting vernacular literature. The discussion was published, and republished, in essay form, and gained Kaske a reputation as a strident proponent of using medieval learning to understand the literature, as opposed to the "New Criticism" school of thought that argued that medieval poetry should be read in a contextual vacuum. The reputation overlooked the balance Kaske struck between focusing on careful reading of the literature, and bringing in exegetical information where prudent. Kaske nonetheless firmly believed that such contextual learning remained one of the most promising ways to make new discoveries about the meaning conveyed by literary works. Listening to Kaske lecture for two hours on "How to Use Biblical Exegesis for the Interpretation of Medieval Literature" at the Dartmouth Dante Institute in 1985, Madison U. Sowell wrote that "I learned more in one exhilarating afternoon about the 'nuts and bolts' of using biblical commentaries to interpret medieval literature than I had in three-and-a-half years at my Ivy League graduate school." He was a "master" at combining "insight and scholarly rigor", wrote Brown, joining "imagination in literary interpretation with the painstaking historical research required to gather supporting evidence". On top of this, a colleague wrote, Kaske added "a kind of native intuition about what a medieval poet might want to say".
## Awards and distinctions
Kaske, Brown wrote, "received most of the awards and honors possible for a medieval scholar". These included two Guggenheim Fellowships, a grant and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a grant from the American Philosophical Society, a Senior Fellowship at the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, a fellowship at Cornell's Society for the Humanities, and grants-in-aid and a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. He served on the editorial and advisory boards of Speculum, The Chaucer Review, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, and Traditio. In 1975, Kaske was appointed chief editor of the latter journal, and elected Councillor in the Medieval Academy of America; seven years later, he was elected a Fellow of the Academy. In 1986, a Festschrift was published in Kaske's honor. The work was titled Magister Regis: Studies in Honor of Robert Earl, playing off of the name of Kaske's Border Collie, Rex.
## Personal life
Kaske and his first wife had a son, David Louis. But "the war left him little time for domesticity", Brown later wrote, and the marriage was over by 1958. That year Kaske married again, this time to Carol Vonckx, an English scholar who herself became a professor at Cornell. On January 10, 1966 they had a son, Richard James; at the time of his death, Kaske also had three grandchildren. He died of a brain tumor on August 8, 1989, at his Ithaca home on North Quarry Street. A funeral was held on August 26, at Ithaca's Immaculate Conception Church, and a memorial service on 21 October at Sage Chapel, with contributions suggested to the university library's Dante-Petrarch or Icelandic collections.
## Publications
Kaske published more than 60 works throughout his career, including articles, chapters, reviews, and a book; most of these were listed in his 1986 Festschrift. Even among his shorter works, his output frequently constituted seminal studies. Kaske particularly enjoyed solving cruxes, producing what Robinson termed "some of the most dazzling literary explications of this century". These included articles on problematic passages in works such as Pearl, Piers Plowman, Dante's Divine Comedy, Chaucer's "The Summoner's Tale", The Husband's Message, The Descent into Hell, Troilus and Criseyde, Le Jeu d'Adam, and Beowulf, and on the correct reading of engravings on spoons found in the seventh-century Sutton Hoo ship-burial. He also penned lengthy interpretations of Beowulf, and of poems and passages by Dante and Chaucer. Kaske's imprint was also evident in the works of others, including former students whose papers he marked up and returned, and those who submitted works to Traditio. "If we were working in the sciences," Brown wrote, "where team research is routine, Bob Kaske's bibliography would be many times its present length."
In 1988 Kaske published Medieval Christian Literary Imagery: A Guide to Interpretation, which colleagues referred to as a "magisterial work" that served as "the crowning achievement of his scholarly career". The work focused on Kaske's craft—using the available tools and sources to do the kind of scholarly explication that he himself did—and Kaske saw it as an extension of his teaching career.
### Books
### Articles
\* Edited and republished in
\* Abridged and added to in
\* Revised and republished in
### Chapters
\* Abridged in ; and in
\* Reissued with an addendum on page 206 in
\* Abridged in
### Reviews
- - A "review article," reviewing A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives, by D. W. Robertson Jr.
### Other
|
21,247 |
Neil Armstrong
| 1,173,876,408 |
American astronaut and lunar explorer (1930–2012)
|
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"United States Astronaut Hall of Fame inductees",
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] |
Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who in 1969 became the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor.
Armstrong was born and raised in Wapakoneta, Ohio. He entered Purdue University, studying aeronautical engineering, with the U.S. Navy paying his tuition under the Holloway Plan. He became a midshipman in 1949 and a naval aviator the following year. He saw action in the Korean War, flying the Grumman F9F Panther from the aircraft carrier USS Essex. After the war, he completed his bachelor's degree at Purdue and became a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base in California. He was the project pilot on Century Series fighters and flew the North American X-15 seven times. He was also a participant in the U.S. Air Force's Man in Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs.
Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in the second group, which was selected in 1962. He made his first spaceflight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966, becoming NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space. During this mission with pilot David Scott, he performed the first docking of two spacecraft; the mission was aborted after Armstrong used some of his re-entry control fuel to stabilize a dangerous roll caused by a stuck thruster. During training for Armstrong's second and last spaceflight as commander of Apollo 11, he had to eject from the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle moments before a crash.
On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM) pilot Buzz Aldrin became the first people to land on the Moon, and the next day they spent two and a half hours outside the Lunar Module Eagle spacecraft while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the Apollo Command Module Columbia. When Armstrong first stepped onto the lunar surface, he famously said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." It was broadcast live to an estimated 530 million viewers worldwide. Apollo 11 was a major U.S. victory in the Space Race, by fulfilling a national goal proposed in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy "of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" before the end of the decade. Along with Collins and Aldrin, Armstrong was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon and received the 1969 Collier Trophy. President Jimmy Carter presented him with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978, he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1979, and with his former crewmates received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.
After he resigned from NASA in 1971, Armstrong taught in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati until 1979. He served on the Apollo 13 accident investigation and on the Rogers Commission, which investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In 2012, Armstrong died due to complications resulting from coronary bypass surgery, at the age of 82.
## Early life
Armstrong was born near Wapakoneta, Ohio, on August 5, 1930, the son of Viola Louise (née Engel) and Stephen Koenig Armstrong. He was of German, Scots-Irish, and Scottish descent. He is a descendant of Clan Armstrong. He had a younger sister, June, and a younger brother, Dean. His father was an auditor for the Ohio state government, and the family moved around the state repeatedly, living in 16 towns over the next 14 years. Armstrong's love for flying grew during this time, having started at the age of two when his father took him to the Cleveland Air Races. When he was five or six, he experienced his first airplane flight in Warren, Ohio, when he and his father took a ride in a Ford Trimotor (also known as the "Tin Goose").
The family's last move was in 1944 and took them back to Wapakoneta, where Armstrong attended Blume High School and took flying lessons at the Wapakoneta airfield. He earned a student flight certificate on his 16th birthday, then soloed in August, all before he had a driver's license. He was an active Boy Scout and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. As an adult, he was recognized by the Scouts with their Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and Silver Buffalo Award. While flying toward the Moon on July 18, 1969, he sent his regards to attendees at the National Scout jamboree in Idaho. Among the few personal items that he carried with him to the Moon and back was a World Scout Badge.
At age 17, in 1947, Armstrong began studying aeronautical engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana; he was the second person in his family to attend college. Armstrong was also accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but he resolved to go to Purdue after watching a football game between the Purdue Boilermakers and the Ohio State Buckeyes at the Ohio Stadium in 1945 in which quarterback Bob DeMoss led the Boilermakers to a sound victory over the highly regarded Buckeyes. An uncle who attended MIT had also advised him that he could receive a good education without going all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts. His college tuition was paid for under the Holloway Plan. Successful applicants committed to two years of study, followed by two years of flight training and one year of service as an aviator in the U.S. Navy, then completion of the final two years of their bachelor's degree. Armstrong did not take courses in naval science, nor did he join the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps.
## Navy service
Armstrong's call-up from the Navy arrived on January 26, 1949, requiring him to report to Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida for flight training with class 5-49. After passing the medical examinations, he became a midshipman on February 24, 1949. Flight training was conducted in a North American SNJ trainer, in which he soloed on September 9, 1949. On March 2, 1950, he made his first aircraft carrier landing on USS Cabot, an achievement he considered comparable to his first solo flight. He was then sent to Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas for training on the Grumman F8F Bearcat, culminating in a carrier landing on USS Wright. On August 16, 1950, Armstrong was informed by letter that he was a fully qualified naval aviator. His mother and sister attended his graduation ceremony on August 23, 1950.
Armstrong was assigned to Fleet Aircraft Service Squadron 7 (FASRON 7) at NAS San Diego (now known as NAS North Island). On November 27, 1950, he was assigned to VF-51, an all-jet squadron, becoming its youngest officer, and made his first flight in a jet, a Grumman F9F Panther, on January 5, 1951. He was promoted to ensign on June 5, 1951, and made his first jet carrier landing on USS Essex two days later. On June 28, 1951, Essex had set sail for Korea, with VF-51 aboard to act as ground-attack aircraft. VF-51 flew ahead to Naval Air Station Barbers Point in Hawaii, where it conducted fighter-bomber training before rejoining the ship at the end of July.
On August 29, 1951, Armstrong saw action in the Korean War as an escort for a photo reconnaissance plane over Songjin. Five days later, on September 3, he flew armed reconnaissance over the primary transportation and storage facilities south of the village of Majon-ni, west of Wonsan. According to Armstrong, he was making a low bombing run at 350 mph (560 km/h) when 6 feet (1.8 m) of his wing was torn off after it collided with a cable that was strung across the hills as a booby trap. He was flying 500 feet (150 m) above the ground when he hit it. While there was heavy anti-aircraft fire in the area, none hit Armstrong's aircraft. An initial report to the commanding officer of Essex said that Armstrong's F9F Panther was hit by anti-aircraft fire. The report indicated he was trying to regain control and collided with a pole, which sliced off 2 feet (0.61 m) of the Panther's right wing. Further perversions of the story by different authors added that he was only 20 feet (6.1 m) from the ground and that 3 feet (0.91 m) of his wing was sheared off.
Armstrong flew the plane back to friendly territory, but due to the loss of the aileron, ejection was his only safe option. He intended to eject over water and await rescue by Navy helicopters, but his parachute was blown back over land. A jeep driven by a roommate from flight school picked him up; it is unknown what happened to the wreckage of his aircraft, F9F-2 BuNo 125122.
In all, Armstrong flew 78 missions over Korea for a total of 121 hours in the air, a third of them in January 1952, with the final mission on March 5, 1952. Of 492 U.S. Navy personnel killed in the Korean War, 27 of them were from Essex on this war cruise. Armstrong received the Air Medal for 20 combat missions, two gold stars for the next 40, the Korean Service Medal and Engagement Star, the National Defense Service Medal, and the United Nations Korea Medal.
Armstrong's regular commission was terminated on February 25, 1952, and he became an ensign in the United States Navy Reserve. On completion of his combat tour with Essex, he was assigned to a transport squadron, VR-32, in May 1952. He was released from active duty on August 23, 1952, but remained in the reserve, and was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) on May 9, 1953. As a reservist, he continued to fly, with VF-724 at Naval Air Station Glenview in Illinois, and then, after moving to California, with VF-773 at Naval Air Station Los Alamitos. He remained in the reserve for eight years, before resigning his commission on October 21, 1960.
## College years
After his service with the Navy, Armstrong returned to Purdue. His previously earned good but not outstanding grades now improved, lifting his final Grade Point Average (GPA) to a respectable but not outstanding 4.8 out of 6.0. He pledged the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and lived in its fraternity house. He wrote and co-directed two musicals as part of the all-student revue. The first was a version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, co-directed with his girlfriend Joanne Alford from the Alpha Chi Omega sorority, with songs from the Walt Disney film, including "Someday My Prince Will Come"; the second was titled The Land of Egelloc ("college" spelled backward), with music from Gilbert and Sullivan but new lyrics. He was chairman of the Purdue Aero Flying Club, and flew the club's aircraft, an Aeronca and a couple of Pipers, which were kept at nearby Aretz Airport in Lafayette, Indiana. Flying the Aeronca to Wapakoneta in 1954, he damaged it in a rough landing in a farmer's field, and it had to be hauled back to Lafayette on a trailer. He was a baritone player in the Purdue All-American Marching Band. Ten years later he was made an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi national band honorary fraternity. Armstrong graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering in January 1955. In 1970, he completed his Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). He would eventually be awarded honorary doctorates by several universities.
Armstrong met Janet Elizabeth Shearon, who was majoring in home economics, at a party hosted by Alpha Chi Omega. According to the couple, there was no real courtship, and neither could remember the exact circumstances of their engagement. They were married on January 28, 1956, at the Congregational Church in Wilmette, Illinois. When he moved to Edwards Air Force Base, he lived in the bachelor quarters of the base, while Janet lived in the Westwood district of Los Angeles. After one semester, they moved into a house in Antelope Valley, near Edwards AFB. Janet did not finish her degree, a fact she regretted later in life. The couple had three children. In June 1961, their daughter Karen was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, a malignant tumor of the middle part of her brain stem. X-ray treatment slowed its growth, but her health deteriorated to the point where she could no longer walk or talk. She died of pneumonia, related to her weakened health, on January 28, 1962, aged two.
## Test pilot
Following his graduation from Purdue, Armstrong became an experimental research test pilot. He applied at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base. NACA had no open positions, and forwarded his application to the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, where Armstrong made his first test flight on March 1, 1955. Armstrong's stint at Cleveland lasted only a couple of months before a position at the High-Speed Flight Station became available, and he reported for work there on July 11, 1955.
On his first day, Armstrong was tasked with piloting chase planes during releases of experimental aircraft from modified bombers. He also flew the modified bombers, and on one of these missions had his first flight incident at Edwards. On March 22, 1956, he was in a Boeing B-29 Superfortress, which was to air-drop a Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket. He sat in the right-hand co-pilot seat while pilot in command, Stan Butchart sat in the left-hand pilot seat flying the B-29.
As they climbed to 30,000 feet (9 km), the number-four engine stopped and the propeller began windmilling (rotating freely) in the airstream. Hitting the switch that would stop the propeller's spinning, Butchart found it slowed but then started spinning again, this time even faster than the others; if it spun too fast, it would break apart. Their aircraft needed to hold an airspeed of 210 mph (338 km/h) to launch its Skyrocket payload, and the B-29 could not land with the Skyrocket attached to its belly. Armstrong and Butchart brought the aircraft into a nose-down attitude to increase speed, then launched the Skyrocket. At the instant of launch, the number-four engine propeller disintegrated. Pieces of it damaged the number-three engine and hit the number-two engine. Butchart and Armstrong were forced to shut down the damaged number-three engine, along with the number-one engine, due to the torque it created. They made a slow, circling descent from 30,000 ft (9 km) using only the number-two engine, and landed safely.
Armstrong served as project pilot on Century Series fighters, including the North American F-100 Super Sabre A and C variants, the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, the Republic F-105 Thunderchief and the Convair F-106 Delta Dart. He also flew the Douglas DC-3, Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star, North American F-86 Sabre, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, Douglas F5D-1 Skylancer, Boeing B-29 Superfortress, Boeing B-47 Stratojet and Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker, and was one of eight elite pilots involved in the Parasev paraglider research vehicle program. Over his career, he flew more than 200 different models of aircraft. His first flight in a rocket-powered aircraft was on August 15, 1957, in the Bell X-1B, to an altitude of 11.4 miles (18.3 km). On landing, the poorly designed nose landing gear failed, as had happened on about a dozen previous flights of the Bell X-1B. He flew the North American X-15 seven times, including the first flight with the Q-ball system, the first flight of the number 3 X-15 airframe, and the first flight of the MH-96 adaptive flight control system. He became an employee of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) when it was established on October 1, 1958, absorbing NACA.
Armstrong was involved in several incidents that went down in Edwards folklore or were chronicled in the memoirs of colleagues. During his sixth X-15 flight on April 20, 1962, Armstrong was testing the MH-96 control system when he flew to a height of over 207,000 feet (63 km) (the highest he flew before Gemini 8). He held up the aircraft nose during its descent to demonstrate the MH-96's g-limiting performance, and the X-15 ballooned back up to around 140,000 feet (43 km). He flew past the landing field at Mach 3 at over 100,000 feet (30 km) in altitude, and ended up 40 miles (64 km) south of Edwards. After sufficient descent, he turned back toward the landing area, and landed. It was the longest X-15 flight in both flight time and length of the ground track.
Fellow astronaut Michael Collins wrote that of the X-15 pilots Armstrong "had been considered one of the weaker stick-and-rudder men, but the very best when it came to understanding the machine's design and how it operated". Many of the test pilots at Edwards praised Armstrong's engineering ability. Milt Thompson said he was "the most technically capable of the early X-15 pilots". Bill Dana said Armstrong "had a mind that absorbed things like a sponge". Those who flew for the Air Force tended to have a different opinion, especially people like Chuck Yeager and Pete Knight, who did not have engineering degrees. Knight said that pilot-engineers flew in a way that was "more mechanical than it is flying", and gave this as the reason why some pilot-engineers got into trouble: Their flying skills did not come naturally. Armstrong made seven flights in the X-15 between November 30, 1960, and July 26, 1962. He reached a top speed of Mach 5.74 (3,989 mph, 6,420 km/h) in the X-15-1, and left the Flight Research Center with a total of 2,400 flying hours.
On April 24, 1962, Armstrong flew for the only time with Yeager. Their job, flying a T-33, was to evaluate Smith Ranch Dry Lake in Nevada for use as an emergency landing site for the X-15. In his autobiography, Yeager wrote that he knew the lake bed was unsuitable for landings after recent rains, but Armstrong insisted on flying out anyway. As they attempted a touch-and-go, the wheels became stuck and they had to wait for rescue. As Armstrong told the story, Yeager never tried to talk him out of it and they made a first successful landing on the east side of the lake. Then Yeager told him to try again, this time a bit slower. On the second landing, they became stuck, provoking Yeager to fits of laughter.
On May 21, 1962, Armstrong was involved in the "Nellis Affair". He was sent in an F-104 to inspect Delamar Dry Lake in southern Nevada, again for emergency landings. He misjudged his altitude and did not realize that the landing gear had not fully extended. As he touched down, the landing gear began to retract; Armstrong applied full power to abort the landing, but the ventral fin and landing gear door struck the ground, damaging the radio and releasing hydraulic fluid. Without radio communication, Armstrong flew south to Nellis Air Force Base, past the control tower, and waggled his wings, the signal for a no-radio approach. The loss of hydraulic fluid caused the tailhook to release, and upon landing, he caught the arresting wire attached to an anchor chain, and dragged the chain along the runway.
It took thirty minutes to clear the runway and rig another arresting cable. Armstrong telephoned Edwards and asked for someone to collect him. Milt Thompson was sent in an F-104B, the only two-seater available, but a plane Thompson had never flown. With great difficulty, Thompson made it to Nellis, where a strong crosswind caused a hard landing and the left main tire suffered a blowout. The runway was again closed to clear it, and Bill Dana was sent to Nellis in a T-33, but he almost landed long. The Nellis base operations office then decided that to avoid any further problems, it would be best to find the three NASA pilots ground transport back to Edwards.
## Astronaut career
In June 1958, Armstrong was selected for the U.S. Air Force's Man in Space Soonest program, but the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) canceled its funding on August 1, 1958, and on November 5, 1958, it was superseded by Project Mercury, a civilian project run by NASA. As a NASA civilian test pilot, Armstrong was ineligible to become one of its astronauts at this time, as selection was restricted to military test pilots. In November 1960, he was chosen as part of the pilot consultant group for the X-20 Dyna-Soar, a military space plane under development by Boeing for the U.S. Air Force, and on March 15, 1962, he was selected by the U.S. Air Force as one of seven pilot-engineers who would fly the X-20 when it got off the design board.
In April 1962, NASA sought applications for the second group of NASA astronauts for Project Gemini, a proposed two-man spacecraft. This time, selection was open to qualified civilian test pilots. Armstrong visited the Seattle World's Fair in May 1962 and attended a conference there on space exploration that was co-sponsored by NASA. After he returned from Seattle on June 4, he applied to become an astronaut. His application arrived about a week past the June 1, 1962, deadline, but Dick Day, a flight simulator expert with whom Armstrong had worked closely at Edwards, saw the late arrival of the application and slipped it into the pile before anyone noticed. At Brooks Air Force Base at the end of June, Armstrong underwent a medical exam that many of the applicants described as painful and at times seemingly pointless.
NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations, Deke Slayton, called Armstrong on September 13, 1962, and asked whether he would be interested in joining the NASA Astronaut Corps as part of what the press dubbed "the New Nine"; without hesitation, Armstrong said yes. The selections were kept secret until three days later, although newspaper reports had circulated since earlier that year that he would be selected as the "first civilian astronaut". Armstrong was one of two civilian pilots selected for this group; the other was Elliot See, another former naval aviator. NASA selected the second group that, compared with the Mercury Seven astronauts, were younger, and had more impressive academic credentials. Collins wrote that Armstrong was by far the most experienced test pilot in the Astronaut Corps.
### Gemini program
#### Gemini 5
On February 8, 1965, Armstrong and Elliot See were picked as the backup crew for Gemini 5, with Armstrong as commander, supporting the prime crew of Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad. The mission's purpose was to practice space rendezvous and to develop procedures and equipment for a seven-day flight, all of which would be required for a mission to the Moon. With two other flights (Gemini 3 and Gemini 4) in preparation, six crews were competing for simulator time, so Gemini 5 was postponed. It finally lifted off on August 21. Armstrong and See watched the launch at Cape Kennedy, then flew to the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston. The mission was generally successful, despite a problem with the fuel cells that prevented a rendezvous. Cooper and Conrad practiced a "phantom rendezvous", carrying out the maneuver without a target.
#### Gemini 8
The crews for Gemini 8 were assigned on September 20, 1965. Under the normal rotation system, the backup crew for one mission became the prime crew for the third mission after, but Slayton designated David Scott as the pilot of Gemini 8. Scott was the first member of the third group of astronauts, who was selected on October 18, 1963, to receive a prime crew assignment. See was designated to command Gemini 9. Henceforth, each Gemini mission was commanded by a member of Armstrong's group, with a member of Scott's group as the pilot. Conrad would be Armstrong's backup this time, and Richard F. Gordon Jr. his pilot. Armstrong became the first American civilian in space. (Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet Union had become the first civilian—and first woman—nearly three years earlier aboard Vostok 6 when it launched on June 16, 1963.) Armstrong would also be the last of his group to fly in space, as See died in a T-38 crash on February 28, 1966, that also took the life of crewmate Charles Bassett. They were replaced by the backup crew of Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan, while Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin moved up from the backup crew of Gemini 10 to become the backup for Gemini 9, and would eventually fly Gemini 12.
Gemini 8 launched on March 16, 1966. It was the most complex mission yet, with a rendezvous and docking with an uncrewed Agena target vehicle, and the planned second American space walk (EVA) by Scott. The mission was planned to last 75 hours and 55 orbits. After the Agena lifted off at 10:00:00 EST, the Titan II rocket carrying Armstrong and Scott ignited at 11:41:02 EST, putting them into an orbit from which they chased the Agena. They achieved the first-ever docking between two spacecraft. Contact with the crew was intermittent due to the lack of tracking stations covering their entire orbits. While out of contact with the ground, the docked spacecraft began to roll, and Armstrong attempted to correct this with the Gemini's Orbit Attitude and Maneuvering System (OAMS). Following the earlier advice of Mission Control, they undocked, but the roll increased dramatically until they were turning about once per second, indicating a problem with Gemini's attitude control. Armstrong engaged the Reentry Control System (RCS) and turned off the OAMS. Mission rules dictated that once this system was turned on, the spacecraft had to reenter at the next possible opportunity. It was later thought that damaged wiring caused one of the thrusters to stick in the on position.
A few people in the Astronaut Office, including Walter Cunningham, felt that Armstrong and Scott "had botched their first mission". There was speculation that Armstrong could have salvaged the mission if he had turned on only one of the two RCS rings, saving the other for mission objectives. These criticisms were unfounded; no malfunction procedures had been written, and it was possible to turn on only both RCS rings, not one or the other. Gene Kranz wrote, "The crew reacted as they were trained, and they reacted wrong because we trained them wrong." The mission planners and controllers had failed to realize that when two spacecraft were docked, they must be considered one spacecraft. Kranz considered this the mission's most important lesson. Armstrong was depressed that the mission was cut short, canceling most mission objectives and robbing Scott of his EVA. The Agena was later reused as a docking target by Gemini 10. Armstrong and Scott received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, and the Air Force awarded Scott the Distinguished Flying Cross as well. Scott was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and Armstrong received a \$678 raise in pay to \$21,653 a year (), making him NASA's highest-paid astronaut.
#### Gemini 11
In Armstrong's final assignment in the Gemini program, he was the back-up Command Pilot for Gemini 11. Having trained for two flights, Armstrong was quite knowledgeable about the systems and took on a teaching role for the rookie backup pilot, William Anders. The launch was on September 12, 1966, with Conrad and Gordon on board, who successfully completed the mission objectives, while Armstrong served as a capsule communicator (CAPCOM).
Following the flight, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked Armstrong and his wife to take part in a 24-day goodwill tour of South America. Also on the tour, which took in 11 countries and 14 major cities, were Dick Gordon, George Low, their wives, and other government officials. In Paraguay, Armstrong greeted dignitaries in their local language, Guarani; in Brazil he talked about the exploits of the Brazilian-born aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont.
### Apollo program
On January 27, 1967—the day of the Apollo 1 fire—Armstrong was in Washington, D.C., with Cooper, Gordon, Lovell and Scott Carpenter for the signing of the United Nations Outer Space Treaty. The astronauts chatted with the assembled dignitaries until 18:45, when Carpenter went to the airport, and the others returned to the Georgetown Inn, where they each found messages to phone the MSC. During these calls, they learned of the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the fire. Armstrong and the group spent the rest of the night drinking scotch and discussing what had happened.
On April 5, 1967, the same day the Apollo 1 investigation released its final report, Armstrong and 17 other astronauts gathered for a meeting with Slayton. The first thing Slayton said was, "The guys who are going to fly the first lunar missions are the guys in this room." According to Cernan, only Armstrong showed no reaction to the statement. To Armstrong it came as no surprise—the room was full of veterans of Project Gemini, the only people who could fly the lunar missions. Slayton talked about the planned missions and named Armstrong to the backup crew for Apollo 9, which at that stage was planned as a medium Earth orbit test of the combined lunar module and command and service module.
The crew was officially assigned on November 20, 1967. For crewmates, Armstrong was assigned Lovell and Aldrin, from Gemini 12. After design and manufacturing delays of the lunar module (LM), Apollo 8 and 9 swapped prime and backup crews. Based on the normal crew rotation, Armstrong would command Apollo 11, with one change: Collins on the Apollo 8 crew began experiencing trouble with his legs. Doctors diagnosed the problem as a bony growth between his fifth and sixth vertebrae, requiring surgery. Lovell took his place on the Apollo 8 crew, and, when Collins recovered, he joined Armstrong's crew.
To give the astronauts practice piloting the LM on its descent, NASA commissioned Bell Aircraft to build two Lunar Landing Research Vehicles (LLRV), later augmented with three Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTV). Nicknamed the "Flying Bedsteads", they simulated the Moon's one-sixth gravity using a turbofan engine to support five-sixths of the craft's weight. On May 6, 1968, 100 feet (30 m) above the ground, Armstrong's controls started to degrade and the LLRV began rolling. He ejected safely before the vehicle struck the ground and burst into flames. Later analysis suggested that if he had ejected half a second later, his parachute would not have opened in time. His only injury was from biting his tongue. The LLRV was completely destroyed. Even though he was nearly killed, Armstrong maintained that without the LLRV and LLTV, the lunar landings would not have been successful, as they gave commanders essential experience in piloting the lunar landing craft.
In addition to the LLRV training, NASA began lunar landing simulator training after Apollo 10 was completed. Aldrin and Armstrong trained for a variety of scenarios that could develop during a real lunar landing. They also received briefings from geologists at NASA.
#### Apollo 11
After Armstrong served as backup commander for Apollo 8, Slayton offered him the post of commander of Apollo 11 on December 23, 1968, as Apollo 8 orbited the Moon. According to Armstrong's 2005 biography, Slayton told him that although the planned crew was Commander Armstrong, Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin, and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, he was offering Armstrong the chance to replace Aldrin with Jim Lovell. After thinking it over for a day, Armstrong told Slayton he would stick with Aldrin, as he had no difficulty working with him and thought Lovell deserved his own command. Replacing Aldrin with Lovell would have made Lovell the lunar module pilot, unofficially the lowest ranked member, and Armstrong could not justify placing Lovell, the commander of Gemini 12, in the number 3 position of the crew. The crew of Apollo 11 was assigned on January 9, 1969, as Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin, with Lovell, Anders, and Fred Haise as the backup crew.
According to Chris Kraft, a March 1969 meeting among Slayton, George Low, Bob Gilruth, and Kraft determined that Armstrong would be the first person on the Moon, in part because NASA management saw him as a person who did not have a large ego. A press conference on April 14, 1969, gave the design of the LM cabin as the reason for Armstrong's being first; the hatch opened inwards and to the right, making it difficult for the LM pilot, on the right-hand side, to exit first. At the time of their meeting, the four men did not know about the hatch consideration. The first knowledge of the meeting outside the small group came when Kraft wrote his book. Methods of circumventing this difficulty existed, but it is not known if these were considered at the time. Slayton added, "Secondly, just on a pure protocol basis, I figured the commander ought to be the first guy out ... I changed it as soon as I found they had the time line that showed that. Bob Gilruth approved my decision."
#### Voyage to the Moon
A Saturn V rocket launched Apollo 11 from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969, at 13:32:00 UTC (09:32:00 EDT local time). Armstrong's wife Janet and two sons watched from a yacht moored on the Banana River. During the launch, Armstrong's heart rate peaked at 110 beats per minute. He found the first stage the loudest, much noisier than the Gemini 8 Titan II launch. The Apollo command module was relatively roomy compared with the Gemini spacecraft. None of the Apollo 11 crew suffered space sickness, as some members of previous crews had. Armstrong was especially glad about this, as he had been prone to motion sickness as a child and could experience nausea after long periods of aerobatics.
Apollo 11's objective was to land safely on the Moon, rather than to touch down at a precise location. Three minutes into the lunar descent, Armstrong noted that craters were passing about two seconds too early, which meant the Lunar Module Eagle would probably touch down several miles (kilometres) beyond the planned landing zone. As the Eagle's landing radar acquired the surface, several computer error alarms sounded. The first was a code 1202 alarm, and even with their extensive training, neither Armstrong nor Aldrin knew what this code meant. They promptly received word from CAPCOM Charles Duke in Houston that the alarms were not a concern; the 1202 and 1201 alarms were caused by executive overflows in the lunar module guidance computer. In 2007, Aldrin said the overflows were caused by his own counter-checklist choice of leaving the docking radar on during the landing process, causing the computer to process unnecessary radar data. When it did not have enough time to execute all tasks, the computer dropped the lower-priority ones, triggering the alarms. Aldrin said he decided to leave the radar on in case an abort was necessary when re-docking with the Apollo command module; he did not realize it would cause the processing overflows.
When Armstrong noticed they were heading toward a landing area that seemed unsafe, he took manual control of the LM and attempted to find a safer area. This took longer than expected, and longer than most simulations had taken. For this reason, Mission Control was concerned that the LM was running low on fuel. On landing, Aldrin and Armstrong believed they had 40 seconds of fuel left, including the 20 seconds' worth which had to be saved in the event of an abort. During training, Armstrong had, on several occasions, landed with fewer than 15 seconds of fuel; he was also confident the LM could survive a fall of up to 50 feet (15 m). Post-mission analysis showed that at touchdown there were 45 to 50 seconds of propellant burn time left.
The landing on the surface of the Moon occurred several seconds after 20:17:40 UTC on July 20, 1969. One of three 67-inch (170 cm) probes attached to three of the LM's four legs made contact with the surface, a panel light in the LM illuminated, and Aldrin called out, "Contact light." Armstrong shut the engine off and said, "Shutdown." As the LM settled onto the surface, Aldrin said, "Okay, engine stop"; then they both called out some post-landing checklist items. After a 10-second pause, Duke acknowledged the landing with, "We copy you down, Eagle." Armstrong confirmed the landing to Mission Control and the world with the words, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Aldrin and Armstrong celebrated with a brisk handshake and pat on the back. They then returned to the checklist of contingency tasks, should an emergency liftoff become necessary. After Armstrong confirmed touch down, Duke re-acknowledged, adding a comment about the flight crew's relief: "Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot." During the landing, Armstrong's heart rate ranged from 100 to 150 beats per minute.
#### First Moon walk
The flight plan called for a crew rest period before leaving the module, but Armstrong asked for this to be moved to earlier in the evening, Houston time. When he and Aldrin were ready to go outside, Eagle was depressurized, the hatch was opened, and Armstrong made his way down the ladder. At the bottom of the ladder, while standing on a Lunar Module landing pad, Armstrong said, "I'm going to step off the LM now". He turned and set his left boot on the lunar surface at 02:56 UTC July 21, 1969, then said, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." The exact time of Armstrong's first step on the Moon is unclear.
Armstrong prepared his famous epigram on his own. In a post-flight press conference, he said that he chose the words "just prior to leaving the LM." In a 1983 interview in Esquire magazine, he explained to George Plimpton: "I always knew there was a good chance of being able to return to Earth, but I thought the chances of a successful touch down on the moon surface were about even money—fifty–fifty ... Most people don't realize how difficult the mission was. So it didn't seem to me there was much point in thinking of something to say if we'd have to abort landing." In 2012, his brother Dean Armstrong said that Neil showed him a draft of the line months before the launch. Historian Andrew Chaikin, who interviewed Armstrong in 1988 for his book A Man on the Moon, disputed that Armstrong claimed to have conceived the line during the mission.
Recordings of Armstrong's transmission does not provide evidence for the indefinite article "a" before "man", though NASA and Armstrong insisted for years that static obscured it. Armstrong stated he would never make such a mistake, but after repeated listenings to recordings, he eventually conceded he must have dropped the "a". He later said he "would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it was not said—although it might actually have been". There have since been claims and counter-claims about whether acoustic analysis of the recording reveals the presence of the missing "a"; Peter Shann Ford, an Australian computer programmer, conducted a digital audio analysis and claims that Armstrong did say "a man", but the "a" was inaudible due to the limitations of communications technology of the time. Ford and James R. Hansen, Armstrong's authorized biographer, presented these findings to Armstrong and NASA representatives, who conducted their own analysis. Armstrong found Ford's analysis "persuasive." Linguists David Beaver and Mark Liberman wrote of their skepticism of Ford's claims on the blog Language Log. A 2016 peer-reviewed study again concluded Armstrong had included the article. NASA's transcript continues to show the "a" in parentheses.
When Armstrong made his proclamation, Voice of America was rebroadcast live by the BBC and many other stations worldwide. An estimated 530 million people viewed the event, 20 percent out of a world population of approximately 3.6 billion.
About 19 minutes after Armstrong's first step, Aldrin joined him on the surface, becoming the second human to walk on the Moon. They began their tasks of investigating how easily a person could operate on the lunar surface. Armstrong unveiled a plaque commemorating the flight, and with Aldrin, planted the flag of the United States. Although Armstrong had wanted the flag to be draped on the flagpole, it was decided to use a metal rod to hold it horizontally. However, the rod did not fully extend, leaving the flag with a slightly wavy appearance, as if there were a breeze. Shortly after the flag planting, President Richard Nixon spoke to them by telephone from his office. He spoke for about a minute, after which Armstrong responded for about thirty seconds. In the Apollo 11 photographic record, there are only five images of Armstrong partly shown or reflected. The mission was planned to the minute, with the majority of photographic tasks performed by Armstrong with the single Hasselblad camera.
After helping to set up the Early Apollo Scientific Experiment Package, Armstrong went for a walk to what is now known as East Crater, 65 yards (59 m) east of the LM, the greatest distance traveled from the LM on the mission. His final task was to remind Aldrin to leave a small package of memorial items to Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov, and Apollo 1 astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee. The Apollo 11 EVA lasted two and a half hours. Each of the subsequent five landings was allotted a progressively longer EVA period; the crew of Apollo 17 spent over 22 hours exploring the lunar surface. In a 2010 interview, Armstrong explained that NASA limited their Moon walk because they were unsure how the space suits would cope with the Moon's extremely high temperature.
##### Return to Earth
After they re-entered the LM, the hatch was closed and sealed. While preparing for liftoff, Armstrong and Aldrin discovered that, in their bulky space suits, they had broken the ignition switch for the ascent engine; using part of a pen, they pushed in the circuit breaker to start the launch sequence. The Eagle then continued to its rendezvous in lunar orbit, where it docked with Columbia, the command and service module. The three astronauts returned to Earth and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, to be picked up by the USS Hornet.
After being released from an 18-day quarantine to ensure that they had not picked up any infections or diseases from the Moon, the crew was feted across the United States and around the world as part of a 38-day "Giant Leap" tour. The tour began on August 13, when the three astronauts spoke and rode in ticker-tape parades in their honor in New York and Chicago, with an estimated six million attendees. On the same evening an official state dinner was held in Los Angeles to celebrate the flight, attended by members of Congress, 44 governors, the Chief Justice of the United States, and ambassadors from 83 nations. President Nixon and Vice President Agnew presented each astronaut with a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
After the tour Armstrong took part in Bob Hope's 1969 USO show, primarily to Vietnam. In May 1970, Armstrong traveled to the Soviet Union to present a talk at the 13th annual conference of the International Committee on Space Research; after arriving in Leningrad from Poland, he traveled to Moscow where he met Premier Alexei Kosygin. Armstrong was the first westerner to see the supersonic Tupolev Tu-144 and was given a tour of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, which he described as "a bit Victorian in nature". At the end of the day, he was surprised to view a delayed video of the launch of Soyuz 9 as it had not occurred to Armstrong that the mission was taking place, even though Valentina Tereshkova had been his host and her husband, Andriyan Nikolayev, was on board.
## Life after Apollo
### Teaching
Shortly after Apollo 11, Armstrong stated that he did not plan to fly in space again. He was appointed Deputy Associate Administrator for Aeronautics for the Office of Advanced Research and Technology at ARPA, served in the position for a year, then resigned from it and NASA in 1971. He accepted a teaching position in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati, having chosen Cincinnati over other universities, including his alma mater Purdue, because Cincinnati had a small aerospace department, and said he hoped the faculty there would not be annoyed that he came straight into a professorship with only a USC master's degree. He began his master's degree while stationed at Edwards years before, and completed it after Apollo 11 by presenting a report on various aspects of Apollo, instead of a thesis on the simulation of hypersonic flight.
At Cincinnati, Armstrong was University Professor of Aerospace Engineering. He took a heavy teaching load, taught core classes, and created two graduate-level classes: aircraft design and experimental flight mechanics. He was considered a good teacher, and a tough grader. His research activities during this time did not involve his work at NASA, as he did not want to give the appearance of favoritism; he later regretted the decision. After teaching for eight years, Armstrong resigned in 1980. When the university changed from an independent municipal university to a state school, bureaucracy increased. He did not want to be a part of the faculty collective bargaining group, so he decided to teach half-time. According to Armstrong, he had the same amount of work but received half his salary. In 1979, less than 10% of his income came from his university salary. Employees at the university did not know why he left.
### NASA commissions
In 1970, after an explosion aboard Apollo 13 aborted its lunar landing, Armstrong was part of Edgar Cortright's investigation of the mission. He produced a detailed chronology of the flight. He determined that a 28-volt thermostat switch in an oxygen tank, which was supposed to have been replaced with a 65-volt version, led to the explosion. Cortright's report recommended the entire tank be redesigned at a cost of \$40 million. Many NASA managers, including Armstrong, opposed the recommendation, since only the thermostat switch had caused the problem. They lost the argument, and the tanks were redesigned.
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan asked Armstrong to join the Rogers Commission investigating the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Armstrong was made vice chairman of the commission and held private interviews with contacts he had developed over the years to help determine the cause of the disaster. He helped limit the committee's recommendations to nine, believing that if there were too many, NASA would not act on them.
Armstrong was appointed to a fourteen-member commission by President Reagan to develop a plan for American civilian spaceflight in the 21st century. The commission was chaired by former NASA administrator Dr. Thomas O. Paine, with whom Armstrong had worked during the Apollo program. The group published a book titled Pioneering the Space Frontier: The Report on the National Commission on Space, recommending a permanent lunar base by 2006, and sending people to Mars by 2015. The recommendations were largely ignored, overshadowed by the Challenger disaster.
Armstrong and his wife attended the memorial service for the victims of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, at the invitation of President George W. Bush.
### Business activities
After Armstrong retired from NASA in 1971, he acted as a spokesman for several businesses. The first company to successfully approach him was Chrysler, for whom he appeared in advertising starting in January 1979. Armstrong thought they had a strong engineering division, and they were in financial difficulty. He later acted as a spokesman for other American companies, including General Time Corporation and the Bankers Association of America. He acted as a spokesman for only American companies.
In addition to his duties as a spokesman, he also served on the board of directors of several companies. The first company board Armstrong joined was Gates Learjet, chairing their technical committee. He flew their new and experimental jets and even set a climb and altitude record for business jets. Armstrong became a member of Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company's board in 1973. They were interested in nuclear power and wanted to increase the company's technical competence. He served on the board of Taft Broadcasting, also based in Cincinnati. Armstrong joined the board of solid rocket booster Thiokol in 1989, after previously serving on the Rogers Commission which found that the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed due to a defect in the Thiokol-manufactured solid rocket boosters. When Armstrong left the University of Cincinnati, he became the chairman of Cardwell International Ltd., a company that manufactured drilling rigs. He served on additional aerospace boards, first United Airlines in 1978, and later Eaton Corporation in 1980. He was asked to chair the board of directors for a subsidiary of Eaton, AIL Systems. He chaired the board through the company's 2000 merger with EDO Corporation, until his retirement in 2002.
### North Pole expedition
In 1985, professional expedition leader Mike Dunn organized a trip to take men he deemed the "greatest explorers" to the North Pole. The group included Armstrong, Edmund Hillary, Hillary's son Peter, Steve Fossett, and Patrick Morrow. They arrived at the Pole on April 6, 1985. Armstrong said he was curious to see what it looked like from the ground, as he had seen it only from the Moon. He did not inform the media of the trip, preferring to keep it private.
### Public profile
Armstrong's family described him as a "reluctant American hero". He kept a low profile later in his life, leading to the belief that he was a recluse. Recalling Armstrong's humility, John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, told CNN: "[Armstrong] didn't feel that he should be out huckstering himself. He was a humble person, and that's the way he remained after his lunar flight, as well as before." Armstrong turned down most requests for interviews and public appearances. Michael Collins said in his book Carrying the Fire that when Armstrong moved to a dairy farm to become a college professor, it was like he "retreated to his castle and pulled up the drawbridge". Armstrong found this amusing, and said, "... those of us that live out in the hinterlands think that people that live inside the Beltway are the ones that have the problems."
Andrew Chaikin says in A Man on the Moon that Armstrong kept a low profile but was not a recluse, citing his participation in interviews, advertisements for Chrysler, and hosting a cable television series. Between 1991 and 1993, he hosted First Flights with Neil Armstrong, an aviation history documentary series on A&E. In 2010, Armstrong voiced the character of Dr. Jack Morrow in Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey, an animated educational sci-fi adventure film initiated by JPL/NASA through a grant from Jet Propulsion Lab.
Armstrong guarded the use of his name, image, and famous quote. When it was launched in 1981, MTV wanted to use his quote in its station identification, with the American flag replaced with the MTV logo, but he refused the use of his voice and likeness. He sued Hallmark Cards in 1994, when they used his name, and a recording of the "one small step" quote, in a Christmas ornament without his permission. The lawsuit was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, which Armstrong donated to Purdue.
For many years, he wrote letters congratulating new Eagle Scouts on their accomplishment, but decided to quit the practice in the 1990s because he felt the letters should be written by people who knew the scout. (In 2003, he received 950 congratulation requests.) This contributed to the myth of his reclusiveness. Armstrong used to autograph everything except first day covers. Around 1993, he found out his signatures were being sold online, and that most of them were forgeries, and stopped giving autographs.
## Personal life
Some former astronauts, including Glenn and Harrison Schmitt, sought political careers after leaving NASA. Armstrong was approached by groups from both the Democratic and Republican parties but declined the offers. He supported states' rights and opposed the U.S. acting as the "world's policeman".
When Armstrong applied at a local Methodist church to lead a Boy Scout troop in the late 1950s, he gave his religious affiliation as "deist". His mother later said that his religious views caused her grief and distress in later life, as she was more religious. Upon his return from the Moon, Armstrong gave a speech in front of the U.S. Congress in which he thanked them for giving him the opportunity to see some of the "grandest views of the Creator". In the early 1980s, he was the subject of a hoax claiming that he converted to Islam after hearing the call to prayer while walking on the Moon. Indonesian singer Suhaemi wrote a song called "Gema Suara Adzan di Bulan" ("The Resonant Sound of the Call to Prayer on the Moon") which described Armstrong's supposed conversion, and the song was widely discussed by Jakarta news outlets in 1983. Similar hoax stories were seen in Egypt and Malaysia. In March 1983, the U.S. State Department responded by issuing a message to embassies and consulates in Muslim countries saying that Armstrong had not converted to Islam. The hoax surfaced occasionally for the next three decades. Part of the confusion arose from the similarity between the names of the country of Lebanon, which has a majority Muslim population, and Armstrong's longtime residence in Lebanon, Ohio.
In 1972, Armstrong visited the Scottish town of Langholm, the traditional seat of Clan Armstrong. He was made the first freeman of the burgh, and happily declared the town his home. To entertain the crowd, the Justice of the Peace read from an unrepealed archaic 400-year-old law that required him to hang any Armstrong found in the town.
Armstrong flew light aircraft for pleasure. He enjoyed gliders and before the moon flight had earned a gold badge with two diamonds from the International Gliding Commission. He continued to fly engineless aircraft well into his 70s.
While working on his farm in November 1978, Armstrong jumped off the back of his grain truck and caught his wedding ring in its wheel, tearing the tip off his left ring finger. He collected the severed tip, packed it in ice, and had surgeons reattach it at a nearby Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. In February 1991, he suffered a mild heart attack while skiing with friends at Aspen, Colorado.
Armstrong and his first wife, Janet, separated in 1990 and divorced in 1994 after 38 years of marriage. He met his second wife, Carol Held Knight, at a golf tournament in 1992, when they were seated together at breakfast. She said little to Armstrong, but he called her two weeks later to ask what she was doing. She replied that she was cutting down a cherry tree, and he arrived at her house 35 minutes later to help. They were married in Ohio on June 12, 1994, and had a second ceremony at San Ysidro Ranch in California. They lived in Indian Hill, Ohio. Through his marriage to Carol, he was the father-in-law of future New York Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen.
In May 2005, Armstrong became involved in a legal dispute with Mark Sizemore, his barber of 20 years. After cutting Armstrong's hair, Sizemore sold some of it to a collector for \$3,000 without Armstrong's knowledge. Armstrong threatened legal action against Sizemore unless he returned the hair or donated the proceeds to a charity of Armstrong's choosing. Sizemore, unable to retrieve the hair, donated the proceeds to charity.
## Illness and death
Armstrong underwent bypass surgery at Mercy Faith–Fairfield Hospital in Cincinnati on August 7, 2012, to relieve coronary artery disease. Although he was reportedly recovering well, he developed complications and died on August 25, aged 82. President Barack Obama issued a statement memorializing Armstrong as "among the greatest of American heroes—not just of his time, but of all time", and added that Armstrong had carried the aspirations of the United States' citizens and had delivered "a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten."
Armstrong's family released a statement describing him as a "reluctant American hero [who had] served his nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut ... While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves. For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink." It prompted many responses, including the Twitter hashtag "#WinkAtTheMoon".
Buzz Aldrin called Armstrong "a true American hero and the best pilot I ever knew", and said he was disappointed that they would not be able to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing together in 2019. Michael Collins said, "He was the best, and I will miss him terribly." NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, "As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind's first small step on a world beyond our own".
A tribute was held for Armstrong on September 13, at Washington National Cathedral, whose Space Window depicts the Apollo 11 mission and holds a sliver of Moon rock amid its stained-glass panels. In attendance were Armstrong's Apollo 11 crewmates, Collins and Aldrin; Gene Cernan, the Apollo 17 mission commander and last man to walk on the Moon; and former senator and astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. In his eulogy, Charles Bolden praised Armstrong's "courage, grace, and humility". Cernan recalled Armstrong's low-fuel approach to the Moon: "When the gauge says empty, we all know there's a gallon or two left in the tank!" Diana Krall sang the song "Fly Me to the Moon". Collins led prayers. David Scott spoke, possibly for the first time, about an incident during their Gemini 8 mission: minutes before the hatch was to be sealed, a small chip of dried glue fell into the latch of his harness and prevented it from being buckled, threatening to abort the mission. Armstrong then called on Conrad to solve the problem, which he did, and the mission proceeded. "That happened because Neil Armstrong was a team player—he always worked on behalf of the team." Congressman Bill Johnson from Armstrong's home state of Ohio led calls for President Barack Obama to authorize a state funeral in Washington D.C. Throughout his lifetime, Armstrong shunned publicity and rarely gave interviews. Mindful that Armstrong would have objected to a state funeral, his family opted to have a private funeral in Cincinnati. On September 14, Armstrong's cremated remains were scattered in the Atlantic Ocean from the USS Philippine Sea. Flags were flown at half-staff on the day of Armstrong's funeral.
In July 2019, after observations of the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, The New York Times reported on details of a medical malpractice suit Armstrong's family had filed against Mercy Health–Fairfield Hospital, where he died. When Armstrong appeared to be recovering from his bypass surgery, nurses removed the wires connected to his temporary pacemaker. He began to bleed internally and his blood pressure dropped. Doctors took him to the hospital's catheterization laboratory, and only later began operating. Two of the three physicians who reviewed the medical files during the lawsuit called this a serious error, saying surgery should have begun immediately; experts the Times talked to, while qualifying their judgement by noting that they were unable to review the specific records in the case, said that taking a patient directly to the operating room under those circumstances generally gave them the highest chance of survival.
The family ultimately settled for \$6 million in 2014. Letters included with the 93 pages of documents sent to the Times by an unknown individual show that his sons intimated to the hospital, through their lawyers, that they might discuss what happened to their father publicly at the 45th anniversary observances in 2014. The hospital, fearing the bad publicity that would result from being accused of negligently causing the death of a revered figure such as Armstrong, agreed to pay as long as the family never spoke about the suit or the settlement. Armstrong's wife, Carol, was not a party to the lawsuit. She reportedly felt that her husband would have been opposed to taking legal action.
## Legacy
When Pete Conrad of Apollo 12 became the third man to walk on the Moon, on November 19, 1969, his first words referenced Armstrong. The shorter of the two, when Conrad stepped from the LM onto the surface he proclaimed "Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me."
Armstrong received many honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (with distinction) from President Nixon, the Cullum Geographical Medal from the American Geographical Society, and the Collier Trophy from the National Aeronautic Association (1969); the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the Dr. Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy (1970); the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy (1971); the Congressional Space Medal of Honor from President Jimmy Carter (1978); the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy from the National Aeronautic Association (2001); and a Congressional Gold Medal (2011).
Armstrong was elected as member into the National Academy of Engineering in 1978 for contributions to aerospace engineering, scientific knowledge, and exploration of the universe as an experimental test pilot and astronaut. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2001.
Armstrong and his Apollo 11 crewmates were the 1999 recipients of the Langley Gold Medal from the Smithsonian Institution. On April 18, 2006, he received NASA's Ambassador of Exploration Award. The Space Foundation named Armstrong as a recipient of its 2013 General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award. Armstrong was also inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor, the International Space Hall of Fame, National Aviation Hall of Fame, and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame. He was awarded his Naval Astronaut badge in a ceremony on board the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower on March 10, 2010, in a ceremony attended by Lovell and Cernan.
The lunar crater Armstrong, 31 miles (50 km) from the Apollo 11 landing site, and asteroid 6469 Armstrong are named in his honor. There are more than a dozen elementary, middle and high schools named for Armstrong in the United States, and many places around the world have streets, buildings, schools, and other places named for him and/or Apollo. The Armstrong Air and Space Museum, in Armstrong's hometown of Wapakoneta, and the Neil Armstrong Airport in New Knoxville, Ohio, are named after him. The mineral armstrongite is named after him, and the mineral armalcolite is named, in part, after him.
In October 2004 Purdue University named its new engineering building Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering; the building was dedicated on October 27, 2007, during a ceremony at which Armstrong was joined by fourteen other Purdue astronauts. The NASA Dryden Flight Research Center was renamed the NASA Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center in 2014. In September 2012, the U.S. Navy named the first Armstrong-class vessel . Delivered to the Navy on September 23, 2015, it is a modern oceanographic research platform supporting a wide range of activities by academic groups. In 2019, the College of Engineering at Purdue University celebrated the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's walk on the Moon by launching the Neil Armstrong Distinguished Visiting Fellows Program, which brings highly accomplished scholars and practitioners to the college to catalyze collaborations with faculty and students.
Armstrong's authorized biography, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, was published in 2005. For many years, he turned down biography offers from authors such as Stephen Ambrose and James A. Michener but agreed to work with James R. Hansen after reading one of Hansen's other biographies. He recalled his initial concerns about the Apollo 11 mission, when he had believed there was only a 50% chance of landing on the Moon. "I was elated, ecstatic and extremely surprised that we were successful". A film adaptation of the book, starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Damien Chazelle, was released in October 2018.
In July 2018, Armstrong's sons put his collection of memorabilia up for sale, including his Boy Scout cap, and various flags and medals flown on his space missions. A series of auctions was held on November 1 to 3, 2018, that realized \$5,276,320. As of July 2019, the auction sales have totaled \$16.7 million. Two fragments of wood from the propeller and four pieces of fabric from the wing of the 1903 Wright Flyer that Armstrong took to the Moon fetched between \$112,500 and \$275,000 each. Armstrong's wife, Carol, has not put any of his memorabilia up for sale.
Armstrong donated his papers to Purdue. Along with posthumous donations by his widow Carol, the collection consists of over 450 boxes of material. In May 2019, she donated two 25-by-24-inch (640 by 610 mm) pieces of fabric from the Wright Flyer, along with his correspondence related to them.
In a 2010 Space Foundation survey, Armstrong was ranked as the number-one most popular space hero; and in 2013, Flying magazine ranked him number one on its list of 51 Heroes of Aviation. The press often asked Armstrong for his views on the future of spaceflight. In 2005, he said that a human mission to Mars would be easier than the lunar challenge of the 1960s. In 2010, he made a rare public criticism of the decision to cancel the Ares I launch vehicle and the Constellation Moon landing program. In an open letter also signed by fellow Apollo veterans Lovell and Cernan, he noted, "For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature". On November 18, 2010, aged 80, he said in a speech during the Science & Technology Summit in the Hague, Netherlands, that he would offer his services as commander on a mission to Mars if he were asked.
The planetarium at Altoona Area High School in Altoona, Pennsylvania is named after Neil Armstrong and is home to a Space Race museum. Similarly, a campsite in Camp Sandy Beach at Yawgoog Scout Reservation in Rockville, Rhode Island, is named in his honor, a nod to his Scouting career.
Armstrong was named the class exemplar for the Class of 2019 at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
## See also
- Apollo 11 in popular culture
- Cueva de los Tayos
- History of aviation
- List of spaceflight records
- Society of Experimental Test Pilots
- The Astronaut Monument
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Brad Pitt
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American actor (born 1963)
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"Best Supporting Actor BAFTA Award winners",
"Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe (film) winners",
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] |
William Bradley Pitt (born December 18, 1963) is an American actor and film producer. He is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. As a public figure, Pitt has been cited as one of the most powerful and influential people in the American entertainment industry.
Pitt first gained recognition as a cowboy hitchhiker in the Ridley Scott road film Thelma & Louise (1991). His first leading roles in big-budget productions came with the drama films A River Runs Through It (1992) and Legends of the Fall (1994). He also starred in the horror film Interview with the Vampire (1994). He gave critically acclaimed performances in David Fincher's crime thriller Seven (1995) and the science fiction film 12 Monkeys (1995). The latter earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and his first Academy Award nomination.
Pitt found greater commercial success starring in Steven Soderbergh's heist film Ocean's Eleven (2001), and reprised his role in its sequels. He cemented his leading man status starring in blockbusters such as the historical epic Troy (2004), the romantic crime film Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), the horror film World War Z (2013), and the action film Bullet Train (2022). Pitt also starred in the critically acclaimed films Fight Club (1999), Babel (2006), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), Burn After Reading (2008), Inglourious Basterds (2009), The Tree of Life (2011), and The Big Short (2015). Pitt received Academy Award nominations for his performances in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Moneyball (2011), and he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a stuntman in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).
In 2001, Pitt co-founded the production company Plan B Entertainment. He produced The Departed (2006), 12 Years a Slave (2013), and Moonlight (2016), all of which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, while others such as The Tree of Life (2011), Moneyball (2011), Selma (2014), and The Big Short (2015) were nominated for the award.
For many years, he was cited as the world's most attractive man by various media outlets, and his personal life is the subject of wide publicity. He is divorced from actresses Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. Pitt has six children with Jolie, three of whom were adopted internationally.
## Early life
William Bradley Pitt was born on December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to William Alvin Pitt, the proprietor of a trucking company, and Jane Etta (née Hillhouse), a school counselor. The family soon moved to Springfield, Missouri, where he lived together with his younger siblings, Douglas Mitchell (born 1966) and Julie Neal (born 1969). Born into a conservative Christian household, he was raised as Southern Baptist and later "oscillate[d] between agnosticism and atheism." He later reconciled his belief in spirituality. Pitt has described Springfield as "Mark Twain country, Jesse James country," having grown up with "a lot of hills, a lot of lakes."
Pitt attended Kickapoo High School, where he was a member of the golf, swimming, and tennis teams. He participated in the school's Key and Forensics clubs, in school debates, and in musicals. Following his graduation from high school, Pitt enrolled in the University of Missouri in 1982, majoring in journalism with a focus on advertising. As graduation approached, Pitt did not feel ready to settle down. He loved films—"a portal into different worlds for me"—and, since films were not made in Missouri, he decided to go to where they were made. Two weeks short of completing the coursework for a degree, Pitt left the university and moved to Los Angeles, where he took acting lessons and worked odd jobs. He has named Gary Oldman, Sean Penn, and Mickey Rourke as his early acting heroes.
## Career
### Early work (1987–1993)
While struggling to establish himself in Los Angeles, Pitt took lessons from acting coach Roy London. His acting career began in 1987, with uncredited parts in the films No Way Out (1987), No Man's Land (1987) and Less than Zero (1987). In May 1987, he made his television debut in a two-episode role on the NBC soap opera Another World. In November of the same year, Pitt had a guest appearance on the CBS sitcom Trial and Error and the ABC sitcom Growing Pains. He appeared in four episodes of the CBS primetime series Dallas between December 1987 and February 1988 as Randy, the boyfriend of Charlie Wade (played by Shalane McCall). Later in 1988, Pitt made a guest appearance on the Fox police drama 21 Jump Street. In the same year, the Yugoslavian–U.S. co-production The Dark Side of the Sun (1988) was his first leading film role, starring as a young American taken by his family to the Adriatic to find a remedy for a skin condition. The film was shelved at the outbreak of the Croatian War of Independence, and was not released until 1997. Pitt made two motion picture appearances in 1989: the first in a supporting role in the comedy Happy Together; the second a featured role in the horror film Cutting Class, the first of Pitt's films to reach theaters. He made guest appearances on television series Head of the Class, Freddy's Nightmares, Thirtysomething, and (for a second time) Growing Pains.
Pitt was cast as Billy Canton, a drug addict who takes advantage of a young runaway (played by Juliette Lewis) in the 1990 NBC television movie Too Young to Die?, the story of an abused teenager sentenced to death for a murder. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly wrote: "Pitt is a magnificent slimeball as her hoody boyfriend; looking and sounding like a malevolent John Cougar Mellencamp, he's really scary." The same year, Pitt co-starred in six episodes of the short-lived Fox drama Glory Days and took a supporting role in the HBO television film The Image. His next appearance came in the 1991 film Across the Tracks; Pitt portrayed Joe Maloney, a high school runner with a criminal brother, played by Rick Schroder. The same year he featured in a Levi's jeans TV commercial based around the song "20th Century Boy" which played in the background. After years of supporting roles in film and frequent television guest appearances, Pitt attracted wider recognition in his supporting role in Ridley Scott's 1991 road film Thelma & Louise. He played J.D., a small-time criminal who befriends Thelma (Geena Davis). His love scene with Davis has been cited as the event that defined Pitt as a sex symbol. After Thelma & Louise, Pitt starred in the 1991 film Johnny Suede, a low-budget picture about an aspiring rock star, and the 1992 live-action/animated fantasy film Cool World, although neither furthered his career, having poor reviews and box office performance.
Pitt took on the role of Paul Maclean in the 1992 biographical film A River Runs Through It, directed by Robert Redford. His portrayal of the character was described by People's Janet Mock as a career-making performance, proving that Pitt could be more than a "cowboy-hatted hunk." He has admitted to feeling under pressure when making the film and thought it was one of his "weakest performances ... It's so weird that it ended up being the one that I got the most attention for." Pitt believed that he benefited from working with such a talented cast and crew. He compared working with Redford to playing tennis with a superior player, saying "when you play with somebody better than you, your game gets better." In 1993, Pitt reunited with Juliette Lewis for the road film Kalifornia. He played Early Grayce, a serial killer and the abusive husband of Lewis' character, in a performance described by Peter Travers of Rolling Stone as "outstanding, all boyish charm and then a snort that exudes pure menace." Pitt also garnered attention for a brief appearance in the cult hit True Romance as a stoner named Floyd, providing comic relief to the action film. He capped the year by winning a ShoWest Award for Male Star of Tomorrow.
### Breakthrough (1994–1998)
In 1994, Pitt portrayed the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac in the horror film Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, based on Anne Rice's 1976 novel of the same name. He was part of an ensemble cast that included Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Slater, and Antonio Banderas. Despite his winning two MTV Movie Awards at the 1995 ceremony, his performance was poorly received. According to the Dallas Observer, "Brad Pitt [...] is a large part of the problem [in the film]. When directors play up his cocky, hunkish, folksy side [...] he's a joy to watch. But there's nothing about him that suggests inner torment or even self-awareness, which makes him a boring Louis."
Following the release of Interview with the Vampire, Pitt starred in Legends of the Fall (1994), based on a novel by the same name by Jim Harrison, set in the American West during the first four decades of the twentieth century. Portraying Tristan Ludlow, son of Colonel William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) a Cornish immigrant, Pitt received his first Golden Globe Award nomination, in the Best Actor category. Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas co-starred as Pitt's brothers. Although the film's reception was mixed, many film critics praised Pitt's performance. Janet Maslin of The New York Times said, "Pitt's diffident mix of acting and attitude works to such heartthrob perfection it's a shame the film's superficiality gets in his way." The Deseret News predicted that Legends of the Fall would solidify Pitt's reputation as a lead actor.
In 1995, Pitt starred alongside Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kevin Spacey in the crime thriller Seven, playing a detective on the trail of a serial killer who preys on people he considers guilty of the Seven Deadly Sins. Pitt called it a great movie and declared the part would expand his acting horizons. He expressed his intent to move on from "this 'pretty boy' thing [...] and play someone with flaws." His performance was critically well received, with Variety saying that it was screen acting at its best, further remarking on Pitt's ability to turn in a "determined, energetic, creditable job" as the detective. Seven earned \$327 million at the international box office.
Following the success of Seven, Pitt played psychotic anarchist Jeffrey Goines in Terry Gilliam's 1995 science fiction film 12 Monkeys. The movie received predominantly positive reviews, with Pitt praised in particular. Janet Maslin of The New York Times called Twelve Monkeys "fierce and disturbing" and remarked on Pitt's "startlingly frenzied performance", concluding that he "electrifies Jeffrey with a weird magnetism that becomes important later in the film." He won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film and received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
The following year, he appeared in the legal drama Sleepers (1996), based on Lorenzo Carcaterra's novel of the same name. The film received mixed reviews. In the 1997 film The Devil's Own Pitt starred, opposite Harrison Ford, as Irish Republican Army terrorist Rory Devany, a role for which he was required to learn an Irish accent. Critical opinion was divided on his accent; "Pitt finds the right tone of moral ambiguity, but at times his Irish brogue is too convincing – it's hard to understand what he's saying", wrote the San Francisco Chronicle. The Charleston Gazette opined that it had favored Pitt's accent over the movie. The Devil's Own grossed \$140 million worldwide, but was a critical failure.
Later that year, he led as Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer in the Jean-Jacques Annaud film Seven Years in Tibet. Pitt trained for months for the role, which demanded significant mountain climbing and trekking practice, including rock climbing in California and the European Alps with his co-star David Thewlis. Pitt had the lead role in 1998's fantasy romance film Meet Joe Black. He portrayed a personification of death inhabiting the body of a young man to learn what it is like to be human. The film received mixed reviews, and many were critical of Pitt's performance. According to Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle, Pitt was unable to "make an audience believe that he knows all the mysteries of death and eternity." Roger Ebert remarked, "Pitt is a fine actor, but this performance is a miscalculation."
### Rise to prominence (1999–2003)
In 1999, Pitt portrayed Tyler Durden in Fight Club, a film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's novel of the same name, directed by David Fincher. Pitt prepared for the part with lessons in boxing, taekwondo, and grappling. To look the part, Pitt consented to the removal of pieces of his front teeth which were restored when filming ended. While promoting Fight Club, Pitt said that the film explored not taking one's aggressions out on someone else but to "have an experience, take a punch more and see how you come out on the other end." Fight Club premiered at the 1999 Venice International Film Festival. Despite divided critical opinion on the film as a whole, Pitt's performance was widely praised. Paul Clinton of CNN noted the risky yet successful nature of the film, while Variety remarked upon Pitt's ability to be "cool, charismatic and more dynamically physical, perhaps than [...] his breakthrough role in Thelma and Louise". In spite of a worse-than-expected box office performance, Fight Club became a cult classic after its DVD release in 2000.
Pitt was cast as an Irish Traveller boxer with a barely intelligible accent in Guy Ritchie's 2000 gangster film Snatch. Several reviewers were critical of Snatch; however, most praised Pitt. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said Pitt was "ideally cast as an Irishman whose accent is so thick even Brits can't understand him", going on to say that, before Snatch, Pitt had been "shackled by roles that called for brooding introspection, but recently he has found his calling in black comic outrageousness and flashy extroversion;" while Amy Taubin of The Village Voice claimed that "Pitt gets maximum comic mileage out of a one-joke role".
The following year Pitt starred opposite Julia Roberts in the romantic comedy The Mexican, a film that garnered a range of reviews but enjoyed box office success. Pitt's next role, in 2001's \$143 million-grossing Cold War thriller Spy Game, was as Tom Bishop, an operative of the CIA's Special Activities Division, mentored by Robert Redford's character. Mark Holcomb of Salon.com enjoyed the film, although he noted that neither Pitt nor Redford provided "much of an emotional connection for the audience".
On November 22, 2001, Pitt made a guest appearance in the eighth season of the television series Friends, playing a man with a grudge against Rachel Green, played by Jennifer Aniston, to whom Pitt was married at the time. For this performance he was nominated for an Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. In December 2001, Pitt played Rusty Ryan in the heist film Ocean's Eleven, a remake of the 1960 Rat Pack original. He joined an ensemble cast including George Clooney, Matt Damon, Andy García, and Julia Roberts. Well received by critics, Ocean's Eleven was highly successful at the box office, earning \$450 million worldwide.
Pitt appeared in two episodes of MTV's reality series Jackass in February 2002, first running through the streets of Los Angeles with several cast members in gorilla suits, and in a subsequent episode participating in his own staged abduction. In the same year, Pitt had a cameo role in George Clooney's directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. He took on his first voice-acting roles in 2003, speaking as the titular character of the DreamWorks animated film Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and playing Boomhauer's brother, Patch, in an episode of the animated television series King of the Hill.
### Worldwide recognition (2004–2008)
Pitt had two major film roles in 2004, starring as Achilles in Troy, and reprising his role, Rusty Ryan, in the sequel Ocean's Twelve. He spent six months sword training before the filming of Troy, based on the Iliad. An on-set injury to his Achilles tendon delayed production on the picture for several weeks. Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post stated that Pitt excelled at such a demanding role. Troy was the first film produced by Plan B Entertainment, a film production company he had founded two years earlier with Jennifer Aniston and Brad Grey, CEO of Paramount Pictures. Ocean's Twelve earned \$362 million worldwide, and Pitt and Clooney's dynamic was described by CNN's Paul Clinton as "the best male chemistry since Paul Newman and Robert Redford." In 2005, Pitt starred as John Smith in the Doug Liman-directed action comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, in which a bored married couple discover that each is an assassin sent to kill the other. The feature received reasonable reviews but was generally lauded for the chemistry between Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who played his character's wife Jane Smith. The Star Tribune noted that "while the story feels haphazard, the movie gets by on gregarious charm, galloping energy and the stars' thermonuclear screen chemistry". Mr. & Mrs. Smith earned \$478 million worldwide, making it one of the biggest hits of 2005.
For his next film, Pitt starred opposite Cate Blanchett in Alejandro González Iñárritu's multi-narrative drama Babel (2006). Pitt's performance was critically well-received, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer said that he was credible and gave the film visibility. Pitt later said he regarded taking the part as one of the best decisions of his career. The film was screened at a special presentation at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and was later featured at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. Babel received seven Academy and Golden Globe award nominations, winning the Best Drama Golden Globe, and earned Pitt a nomination for the Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe. That same year, Pitt's company Plan B Entertainment produced The Departed, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Pitt was credited on-screen as a producer; however, only Graham King was ruled eligible for the Oscar win.
Reprising his role as Rusty Ryan in a third picture, Pitt starred in 2007's Ocean's Thirteen. While less lucrative than the first two films, this sequel earned \$311 million at the international box office. Pitt's next film role was as American outlaw Jesse James in the 2007 Western drama The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, adapted from Ron Hansen's 1983 novel of the same name. Directed by Andrew Dominik and produced by Pitt's company Plan B Entertainment, the film premiered at the 2007 Venice Film Festival, with Pitt playing a "scary and charismatic" role, according to Lewis Beale of Film Journal International, and earning Pitt the Volpi Cup award for Best Actor at the 64th Venice International Film Festival. He eventually collected the award one year later at the 2008 festival. As of January 2019, it was his own favorite of his films.
Pitt's next appearance was in the 2008 black comedy Burn After Reading, his first collaboration with the Coen brothers. The film received a positive reception from critics, with The Guardian calling it "a tightly wound, slickly plotted spy comedy", noting that Pitt's performance was one of the funniest. He was later cast as Benjamin Button, the lead in David Fincher's 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a loosely adapted version of a 1921 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story follows a man who is born an octogenarian and ages in reverse, with Pitt's "sensitive" performance making Benjamin Button a "timeless masterpiece", according to Michael Sragow of The Baltimore Sun. The performance earned Pitt his first Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, as well as a fourth Golden Globe and second Academy Award nomination, all in the category for Best Actor. The film received thirteen Academy Award nominations, and grossed \$329 million at the box office worldwide.
### Established actor (2009–present)
Pitt's next leading role came in 2009 with the Quentin Tarantino-directed war film Inglourious Basterds, which premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Pitt played Lieutenant Aldo Raine, an American resistance fighter battling Nazis in German-occupied France. The film was a box office hit, taking \$311 million worldwide, and garnered generally favorable reviews. The film received multiple awards and nominations, including eight Academy Award nominations and seven MTV Movie Award nominations, including Best Male Performance for Pitt. He next voiced the superhero character Metro Man in the 2010 animated feature Megamind. Pitt produced and appeared in Terrence Malick's experimental drama The Tree of Life, co-starring Sean Penn, which won the Palme d'Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. In a performance that attracted strong praise, he portrayed the Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane in the drama Moneyball, which is based on the 2003 book of the same name written by Michael Lewis. Moneyball received six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor for Pitt.
His next role was as mob hitman Jackie Cogan in Andrew Dominik's 2012 Killing Them Softly, based on the novel Cogan's Trade by George V. Higgins. In 2013, Pitt starred in World War Z, a thriller about a zombie apocalypse, based on Max Brooks's novel of the same name. Pitt also produced the film. World War Z grossed \$540 million at the box office worldwide, becoming Pitt's highest grossing picture. Next in 2013, he produced, and played a small role in, 12 Years a Slave, a historical drama based on the autobiography of Solomon Northup. The film received critical acclaim and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning three, including Best Picture. Also in 2013, Pitt had a supporting role in Ridley Scott's The Counselor. Plan B Entertainment landed its first television series on the 2013–2014 schedule, as their joint venture with ABC Studios, the sci-fi/fantasy drama Resurrection, was picked up by ABC.
Pitt starred in Fury, a World War II film directed and written by David Ayer, and co-starring Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Jon Bernthal, Michael Peña, and Jason Issacs. The film was released on October 17, 2014. By the end of its run, Fury proved to be a commercial and critical success; it grossed more than \$211 million worldwide and received highly positive reviews from critics. In 2015, Pitt starred opposite his wife, Jolie, in her third directorial effort, By the Sea, a romantic drama about a marriage in crisis, based on her screenplay. The film was their first collaboration since 2005's Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Pitt's next role came with the biographical comedy-drama The Big Short, which he also produced and also co-starred alongside Christian Bale, Steve Carell, and Ryan Gosling. The film was a commercial and critical success. It went on to gross over \$102 million worldwide and received positive reviews from critics. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, earning Pitt his third Academy Award nomination as producer. In 2016, Pitt starred in Robert Zemeckis's romantic thriller Allied, in which he plays an assassin who falls in love with a French spy (played by Marion Cotillard) during a mission to kill a German official in World War II. In 2017, he starred in the Netflix satirical war comedy War Machine, which he also produced. Pitt played a recurring role as a weatherman on the late-night talk show The Jim Jefferies Show throughout 2017.
A 2017 sequel to World War Z was in announced in 2016, before the film was briefly delayed, then confirmed to be directed by David Fincher, and then ultimately shelved due to budget issues. Pitt starred as Cliff Booth, a stunt double, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, in Quentin Tarantino's 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, reuniting with DiCaprio after The Departed, which Pitt produced and DiCaprio starred in. For his performance in the film, he received awards for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, BAFTA Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and Critics' Choice Movie Awards. This is the second Academy Award for Brad Pitt, his first that he received for acting. In 2019, he also starred in James Gray's deep space epic Ad Astra, in which he played Roy McBride, a space engineer searching the galaxy for his father. Pitt's performance was praised as one of his career-best turn, delivering a performance "that weaponizes passivity into a lethal form of self-defense". On April 25, 2020 Pitt portrayed Dr. Anthony Fauci in the cold open on Saturday Night Live earning a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series nomination.
In 2021, Pitt entered the recording business by creating a company with French record producer Damien Quintard. Set in Pitt's Chateau Miraval in South of France, Miraval Studios will re-open in 2022 after two decades of inactivity. The previous version of the studio was one of the most iconic studios in the world, producing the records for Pink Floyd, the Cranberries, AC/DC, Sade and Muse, among others.
In 2022, Pitt starred in Bullet Train, directed by David Leitch, and reunited with his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood co-star Margot Robbie in Babylon, directed by Damien Chazelle. In September 2021, it was revealed that he will reteam with George Clooney in a thriller film written and directed by Jon Watts. On January 5, 2022, he signed on to star in and produce a racing film on Formula One, directed by Joseph Kosinski, for which he will earn \$30 million.
## Philanthropy and activism
Pitt visited the University of Missouri campus in October 2004 to encourage students to vote in the 2004 U.S. presidential election, in which he supported John Kerry. Later in October, he publicly supported the principle of public funding for embryonic stem-cell research. "We have to make sure that we open up these avenues so that our best and our brightest can go find these cures that they believe they will find", he said. In support of this he endorsed Proposition 71, a California ballot initiative intended to provide state government funding for stem-cell research.
Pitt supports One Campaign, an organization aimed at combating AIDS and poverty in the developing world. He narrated the 2005 PBS public television series Rx for Survival: A Global Health Challenge, which discusses current global health issues. The following year Pitt and Jolie flew to Haiti, where they visited a school supported by Yéle Haïti, a charity founded by Haitian-born hip hop musician Wyclef Jean. In May 2007, Pitt and Jolie donated \$1 million to three organizations in Chad and Sudan dedicated to those affected by the crisis in the Darfur region. Along with Clooney, Damon, Don Cheadle, David Pressman, and Jerry Weintraub, Pitt is one of the founders of Not On Our Watch, an organization that focuses global attention on stopping "mass atrocities".
Pitt has a sustained interest in architecture, even taking time away from film to study computer-aided design at the Los Angeles offices of renowned architect Frank Gehry. He narrated e2 design, a PBS television series focused on worldwide efforts to build environmentally friendly structures through sustainable architecture and design. In 2000, he co-authored an architectural book on the Blacker House with the architects Thomas A. Heinz and Randell Makinson. In 2006, he founded the Make It Right Foundation, organizing housing professionals in New Orleans to finance and construct 150 sustainable, affordable new houses in New Orleans's Ninth Ward following the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.
The project involves 13 architectural firms and the environmental organization Global Green USA, with several of the firms donating their services. Pitt and philanthropist Steve Bing have each committed \$5 million in donations. The first six homes were completed in October 2008, and in September 2009 Pitt received an award in recognition of the project from the U.S. Green Building Council, a non-profit trade organization that promotes sustainability in how buildings are designed, built and operated. Pitt met with U.S. President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi in March 2009 to promote his concept of green housing as a national model and to discuss federal funding possibilities.
In September 2006, Pitt and Jolie established a charitable organization, the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, to aid humanitarian causes around the world. The foundation made initial donations of \$1 million each to Global Action for Children and Doctors Without Borders, followed by an October 2006 donation of \$100,000 to the Daniel Pearl Foundation, an organization created in memory of the late American journalist Daniel Pearl. According to federal filings, Pitt and Jolie invested \$8.5 million into the foundation in 2006; it gave away \$2.4 million in 2006 and \$3.4 million in 2007. In June 2009, the Jolie-Pitt Foundation donated \$1 million to a U.N. refugee agency to help Pakistanis displaced by fighting between troops and Taliban militants. In January 2010, the foundation donated \$1 million to Doctors Without Borders for emergency medical assistance to help victims of the Haiti earthquake.
Pitt is a supporter of same-sex marriage. In an October 2006 interview with Esquire, Pitt said that he would marry Jolie when everyone in America is legally able to marry. In September 2008, he donated \$100,000 to the campaign against California's 2008 ballot proposition Proposition 8, an initiative to overturn the state Supreme Court decision that had legalized same-sex marriage. In March 2012, Pitt was featured in a performance of Dustin Lance Black's play, 8 – a staged reenactment of the federal trial that overturned California's Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage – as Judge Vaughn Walker.
In September 2012, Pitt reaffirmed his support for Obama, saying, "I am an Obama supporter and I'm backing his U.S. election campaign." In October 2020, he narrated an advertisement for Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
## Personal life
### Relationships
From the late 1980s to early 1990s, Pitt was romantically involved with several of his co-stars, including Robin Givens (Head of the Class), Jill Schoelen (Cutting Class), and Juliette Lewis (Too Young to Die? and Kalifornia). Subsequently, Pitt had a much-publicized romance and engagement to his Seven co-star, Gwyneth Paltrow, whom he dated from 1994 to 1997.
Pitt met actress Jennifer Aniston in 1998; they married in a private wedding ceremony in Malibu on July 29, 2000. In January 2005, Pitt and Aniston announced they had decided to separate. Two months later, Aniston filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Pitt and Aniston's divorce was finalized by the Los Angeles Superior Court on October 2, 2005. Despite media reports that Pitt and Aniston had an acrimonious relationship, Pitt said in a February 2009 interview that he and Aniston "check in with each other", adding that they were both big parts of each other's lives.
During Pitt's divorce proceedings, his involvement with his Mr. & Mrs. Smith co-star Angelina Jolie attracted media attention. Jolie and Pitt stated that they fell in love on the set and that there was no infidelity. In April 2005, one month after Aniston filed for divorce, a set of paparazzi photographs emerged showing Pitt, Jolie, and her son Maddox at a beach in Kenya; the press interpreted the pictures as evidence of a relationship between Pitt and Jolie. Throughout 2005, the two were seen together with increasing frequency, and the entertainment media dubbed the couple "Brangelina". On January 11, 2006, Jolie confirmed to People that she was pregnant with Pitt's child, thereby publicly acknowledging their relationship for the first time. Pitt and Jolie announced their engagement in April 2012 after seven years together. They were legally married on August 14, 2014, in Los Angeles. They had their wedding in a private ceremony in Château Miraval, France on August 23, 2014. On September 19, 2016, Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt, citing irreconcilable differences. On April 12, 2019, the court declared Jolie and Pitt legally single.
In 2022, Pitt began dating Ines de Ramon, a jewelry designer who is 29 years younger than him.
### Children
In July 2005, Pitt accompanied Jolie to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where she adopted her second child, Zahara Marley. On December 3, 2005, Pitt was in the process of becoming the adoptive father of Zahara, and Jolie's first adopted child, Maddox Chivan. On January 19, 2006, a California judge granted Jolie's request to change the children's surnames from "Jolie" to "Jolie-Pitt". The adoptions were finalized soon after.
Jolie gave birth to daughter Shiloh Nouvel in Swakopmund, Namibia, on May 27, 2006. Pitt confirmed that their newborn daughter would qualify for a Namibian passport. The couple sold the first pictures of Shiloh through the distributor Getty Images; the North American rights were purchased by People for over \$4.1 million, while Hello! obtained the British rights for approximately \$3.5 million. The proceeds from the sale were donated to charities serving African children. Madame Tussauds in New York unveiled a wax figure of two-month-old Shiloh; it marked the first time an infant was recreated in wax by Madame Tussauds.
On March 15, 2007, Jolie adopted three-year-old Pax Thien from an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Pitt adopted Pax in the United States on February 21, 2008.
At the Cannes Film Festival in May 2008, Jolie confirmed that she was expecting twins. She gave birth to son Knox Léon and daughter Vivienne Marcheline on July 12, 2008 in Nice, France. The rights for the first images of Knox and Vivienne were jointly sold to People and Hello! for \$14 million—the most expensive celebrity pictures ever taken. The couple donated the proceeds to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.
In September 2016, the FBI and the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services investigated Pitt for child abuse following an incident on a plane, where Pitt was accused by an anonymous person of being "verbally abusive" and "physical" towards one of his children. In its final report on the investigation, the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services ruled that Pitt did not physically abuse any of his children. Pitt was also cleared by the FBI of any wrongdoing.
Since Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt on September 19, 2016, they have been embroiled in a custody battle over their children. Jolie had full custody until May 2021 when Pitt was granted joint custody, over four and a half years after proceedings began. However, in July, Los Angeles superior court judge John W. Ouderkirk was removed from the case due to concerns over his impartiality as he did not sufficiently disclose business relationships with Pitt's lawyers. This resulted in the custody arrangement reverting to a previous November 2018 agreement where Jolie has primary physical custody while Pitt has "custodial time" with their minor children.
### Alcoholism
In September 2016, Pitt got sober and began attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. In December 2019, he wrote an article for Interview in which he talked with his Legends of the Fall and Meet Joe Black costar and fellow recovering alcoholic Anthony Hopkins about their experiences with addiction and recovery.
### Cannabis use
Pitt has admitted to using cannabis in the late '90s as a way to deal with his increasing fame. According to Pitt: "I was hiding out from the celebrity thing; I was smoking way too much dope; I was sitting on the couch and just turning into a doughnut." He reduced his cannabis use and focused on his work after a trip to Morocco, where he witnessed extreme poverty and suffering.
### Prosopagnosia
In 2022, Pitt said that he had struggled for years to recognize people's faces due to prosopagnosia (face blindness). In a 2013 interview, he said that his inability to recognize people's faces had become so severe that he often wanted to stay home. Formally, however, Pitt has not been diagnosed with prosopagnosia.
### Artworks
Pitt has an interest in art, learned pottery, and has created sculptures. Nine of his sculptures were exhibited together with works by musician Nick Cave and artist Thomas Houseago at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere, Finland in 2022–2023.
## Public image
Pitt has been cited as a sex symbol by many sources, including Empire, who named him one of the 25 sexiest stars in film history in 1995. The same year, he was named People's Sexiest Man Alive, an accolade he received again in 2000. Pitt appeared on Forbes' annual Celebrity 100 list of the 100 most powerful celebrities from 2006 to 2008 placing at numbers 20, 5 and 10, respectively. In 2007, he appeared on the Time 100 list, a compilation of the 100 most influential people in the world, as selected annually by Time magazine. The magazine credited Pitt for using "his star power to get people to look [to where] cameras don't usually catch". He was again included on the Time 100 in 2009, this time in the "Builders and Titans" list.
Beginning in 2005, Pitt's relationship with Angelina Jolie became one of the world's most reported celebrity stories. After Jolie was confirmed to be pregnant in early 2006, the intense media hype surrounding the couple reached what Reuters, in a story titled "The Brangelina fever," called "the point of insanity". To avoid media attention, the couple flew to Namibia for the birth of their daughter Shiloh, which was described by a paparazzi blog as "the most anticipated baby since Jesus Christ." Similarly, intense media interest greeted the announcement of Jolie's second pregnancy two years later; for the two weeks Jolie spent in a seaside hospital in Nice, reporters and photographers camped outside on the promenade to report on the birth.
In a 2006 global industry survey by ACNielsen in 42 international markets, Pitt, together with Jolie, were found to be the favorite celebrity endorsers for brands and products worldwide. Pitt has appeared in several television commercials. For the U.S. market, he starred in a Heineken commercial aired during the 2005 Super Bowl; it was directed by David Fincher, who had directed Pitt in Seven, Fight Club, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Other commercial appearances came in television spots including Acura Integra, in which he was featured opposite Russian model Tatiana Sorokko, as well as SoftBank, and Edwin Jeans. On June 2, 2015, the minor planet 29132 Bradpitt was named in his honor.
## Filmography
## Awards and nominations
|
4,508,917 |
Fallout (video game)
| 1,173,098,306 |
1997 video game
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Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game is a 1997 role-playing video game developed and published by Interplay Productions. In a mid-22nd century post-apocalyptic and retro-futuristic world, decades after a global nuclear war between the United States and China, Fallout's protagonist, the Vault Dweller, inhabits the underground nuclear shelter Vault 13. After customizing their character, the player must scour the surrounding wasteland for a computer chip that can fix the Vault's failed water supply system. They interact with other survivors, some of whom give them missions, and engage in turn-based combat where they battle until their action points are depleted.
Tim Cain began working on Fallout in 1994. It began as a game engine based on Steve Jackson Games's tabletop role-playing game GURPS. Interplay dropped the license after Steve Jackson Games objected to Fallout's violence, and Cain and designer Christopher Taylor created a new character customization scheme, SPECIAL. Although Interplay initially gave the game little attention, the development ultimately cost \$3 million and employed up to thirty people. Interplay considered Fallout the spiritual successor to its 1988 role-playing game Wasteland and drew artistic inspiration from 1950s literature and media emblematic of the Atomic Age as well as the movies Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog. The quests were intentionally made morally ambiguous. After three and a half years of development, Fallout was released in North America in October 1997.
Fallout received acclaim for its open-ended gameplay, character system, plot, and perceived original setting. It won "Role-Playing Game of the Year" from GameSpot and Computer Games Magazine, was nominated by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences at the Spotlight Awards, and is often listed among the greatest video games of all time. Fallout has been credited for renewing consumer interest in the role-playing video genre due to its setting, open-ended plot, and gameplay. Fallout was a commercial success, selling 600,000 copies worldwide. It spawned a successful series of sequels and spin-offs, the rights to which were purchased in 2007 by Bethesda Softworks.
## Gameplay
### Character creation
Fallout is a role-playing video game. The player begins by selecting one of three characters, or one with player-customized attributes. The protagonist, known as the Vault Dweller, has seven primary statistics that the player can set: strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck. Each statistic may range from one to ten, provided their sum does not exceed 40. Two other statistics set during character creation are skills and traits. All 18 skills are learned abilities, their effectiveness determined by a percentage value. Their initial effectivenesses are determined by the primary statistics, but three can be given a 20% boost. Traits are character qualities with both a positive and negative effect; the player can pick two from a list of sixteen. During gameplay, the player can gather experience points through various actions. For gathering experience points, the player will level up and may increase their skills by a set number of points. Every three levels, the player can grant themself a special ability, or perk. There are 50 perks and each has prerequisites that must be met. For example, "Animal Friend", which prevents animals from attacking the player character, requires the player to be level nine, have an intelligence of five, and have an outdoorsman skill of 25%.
### Exploration and combat
In Fallout, the player explores the game world from an trimetric perspective and interacts with non-player characters (NPCs). Characters vary in their amount of dialogue; some say short messages, while others speak at length. Significant characters are illustrated with 3D models, known as "talking heads", during conversations. The player can barter with other characters or buy goods using bottle caps as currency. The game has companions that the player can recruit for exploration and combat, although they cannot be directly controlled.
There are three main quests where completion is required, two of them given after completion of the first one. The first main quest has a time limit of 150 in-game days; the game ends if the player fails to complete it within the allotted time. Some characters give the player side quests; if the player solves them, they receive experience points. The player can use the PIPBoy 2000, a portable wearable computer that tracks these quests. Many quests feature multiple solutions; they can often be completed through diplomacy, combat, or stealth, and some allow solutions that are unconventional or contrary to the original task. Based on how they completed quests, the player can earn or lose karma points, which determine how others treat them. The player's actions dictate what future story or gameplay opportunities are available and the ending.
Combat is turn based and uses an action-point system. During each turn, multiple actions may be performed by the player until they run out of action points. Different actions consume different amounts of points. The player can rapidly switch between two equipped weapons, and may acquire a diverse range of weapons, many of which can target specific areas of enemies. Melee (hand-to-hand) weapons typically have two attacks: swing or thrust. If the player has equipped no weapon, they can punch or kick.
## Plot
### Setting
On October 23, 2077, a global nuclear war between the United States and China devastated the world and destroyed modern civilizations. The events of Fallout take place nearly a century later in 2161, and follow the Vault Dweller, a human born and raised within Vault 13, one of a number of underground fallout shelters built to protect survivors. Survivors on the surface live off the salvage of the old world.
Vault 13 is located beneath the mountains of Southern California. The Vault Dweller can explore major settlements including Junktown, which is mired in conflict between the local sheriff, Killian Darkwater, and a criminal, Gizmo; the Hub, a bustling merchant city with job opportunities; and Necropolis, a city founded by ghouls, humans who lived in Vault 12 and became nuclear-radiated creatures. The Vault Dweller's journey also brings them into contact with various factions, including the Brotherhood of Steel, a quasi-religious technology-based group with militaristic warriors, the Children of the Cathedral, an optimistic religious cult; and the Super Mutants, an army of virtually immortal monsters immune to radiation.
### Characters
The player controls the Vault Dweller, who is sent into the Wasteland to save their vault. The Vault Dweller can be customized or based on one of three pre-generated characters: Albert Cole, a negotiator and charismatic leader with a legal background; Natalia Dubrovhsky, a talented acrobat and intelligent and resourceful granddaughter of a Russian diplomat in the pre-War Soviet consulate in Los Angeles; and Max Stone, the largest person in the Vault who is known for his strength, stamina, and lack of intelligence. The three characters present a diplomatic, deceptive, or combative approach to the game, respectively. Although the character can be male or female, the Vault Dweller is canonically male.
The four companions the player can recruit are: Ian, a guard from Shady Sands; Tycho, a desert ranger; Dogmeat, a tireless loyal dog; and Katja, a member of an organization called the Followers of the Apocalypse. Other major characters include Vault Boy, the mascot of Vault-Tec, who are the creators of the Vaults and the PIPBoy 2000; Killian Darkwater, the mayor and shopkeeper of Junktown; and the Master, leader of the Super Mutants and the main antagonist.
### Story
In Vault 13, the Water Chip, a computer component responsible for the Vault's water recycling and pumping machinery, stops working. With only 150 days before water reserves will run dry, the Vault Overseer tasks the Vault Dweller with finding a replacement. Armed with the PIPBoy 2000 and meager equipment, the Vault Dweller leaves Vault 13 for the nearest source of possible help, Vault 15, but finds it abandoned and in ruins. The Vault Dweller explores the wasteland and locates a replacement chip in Vault 12, underneath Necropolis.
The Vault Dweller returns to Vault 13 with the chip and the water system is repaired. The Overseer becomes concerned about the mutants reported by the Vault Dweller. Believing the mutations are too widespread and extreme to be a natural occurrence, the Overseer charges the Vault Dweller with finding and stopping the source of the mutations. Information discovered throughout the wasteland reveals that humans are being captured and turned into Super Mutants by exposure to the Forced Evolutionary Virus (F.E.V.). The Super Mutants are led by the Master, who intends to transform every human into a Super Mutant and establish "unity" on Earth. The Children of the Cathedral are a front created by the Master, who is using them to trick humans into peaceful submission.
To stop the mutations, the Vault Dweller must destroy the vats containing the F.E.V. and kill the Master; the order of the tasks is chosen by the player. The Vault Dweller travels to the Mariposa Military Base to destroy it and the vats within, preventing the creation of more Super Mutants. To kill the Master, the Vault Dweller travels to the Children's Cathedral and locates a prototype Vault beneath it, from which the Master commands his army. The Vault Dweller infiltrates the Vault and can choose to convince the Master that his plan will fail because the Super Mutants are infertile, kill him immediately, or set off an explosion that destroys the Cathedral. The Vault Dweller returns to Vault 13 but is denied entry by the Overseer, who fears that they have been changed by their experiences and the tales of their exploits and accomplishments will encourage the inhabitants to abandon the Vault. The Overseer exiles the Vault Dweller into the wasteland. Fallout concludes with the legacy of the Vault Dweller's decisions on the societies and people they had encountered.
## Development
Development on Fallout began in early 1994. Initially, Interplay gave the game little attention, and for the first six months, the programmer Tim Cain was the sole developer. Cain eventually enlisted the aid of Interplay employees during their spare time. The development team behind Fallout—led by Cain, the designer Christopher Taylor, and the art director Leonard Boyarsky—reached 15 people in 1995. In 1996, the producer Feargus Urquhart recruited some Interplay workers to join the team, expanding it to 30. Cain considered the team "amazing" for their dedication, while Urquhart described working under Interplay as "barely controlled chaos".
The tentative title, Vault-13: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Role-Playing Game, was rejected as unfitting. Armageddon was considered as an alternative, but was already in use for another Interplay project (which was later canceled). Interplay's president Brian Fargo suggested the title Fallout. Interplay intended to use "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" by the Ink Spots as the theme song, but was hindered by a copyright problem, so another Ink Spots song, "Maybe", was used. The development concluded on October 1, 1997, after three and a half years and a total cost of approximately \$3 million.
### Engine and design
Fallout started as a game engine—a framework for a video game—that Cain was developing during his spare time, based on the tabletop role-playing game Generic Universal RolePlaying System (GURPS). It entered more coordinated development after Cain convinced Fargo of its potential, and Interplay announced it had acquired the GURPS license in 1994. The first Fallout prototype was finished that year.
The team considered making the game first-person and 3D, but discarded the idea because the models would not have held the desired amount of detail. They instead selected an oblique projection, producing a trimetric perspective. Designed to be open-world and non-linear, Fallout was balanced so that, even though side quests are optional, characters who do not improve their skills and experience through them would be too ill-equipped to finish. However, Taylor also added the 150-day time limit to the game to keep the player focused on the main quests.
The game was nearly canceled in late 1994 after Interplay acquired the licenses to the Dungeons & Dragons franchises Forgotten Realms and Planescape, but Cain convinced Interplay to let him finish. After the success of the role-playing video game Diablo, released in January 1997, Cain resisted pressure to convert Fallout into a real-time multiplayer game. In March 1997, Interplay dropped the license for GURPS due to creative differences with GURPS's creator Steve Jackson Games. According to Interplay, Steve Jackson objected to the amount of violence and gore. Interplay was forced to change the GURPS system to the internally-developed SPECIAL system; Taylor and Cain were each given a week to design and code it, respectively.
### Concept and influences
Prior to the license's termination, the engine for Fallout was based on GURPS. Fantasy and time-traveling settings were considered before the development team decided on a post-apocalyptic setting. Taylor outlined the design goals in a vision statement, which Cain called an inspiration for the development team and "a major reason why the game came together at all."
Fallout was a spiritual successor to Interplay's role-playing video game Wasteland (1988), published by Electronic Arts. Almost everyone who worked on Fallout had played it. The team was unable to make Fallout a direct sequel to Wasteland because Electronic Arts refused to license it. The team drew inspiration for Fallout's retro-futuristic art style from 1950s literature and media related to the Atomic Age. Especial influence came from the 1956 science fiction novel Forbidden Planet and optimistic Cold War posters, which Boyarsky reportedly loved.
The vaults were influenced by the underground base in the science fiction movie A Boy and His Dog (1975). Cain said that the team "all loved X-COM" and that Fallout featured combat similar to X-COM's prior to the GURPS license. Cain admired Star Control II (1992) and said it influenced Fallout's open-ended design. Fallout features many popular culture references. The team was only allowed to include references if understanding the source material was not required for the reference to make sense. For example, the Slayer perk's name references the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer while generically matching its effect (turning all attacks to critical hits).
### Characters and writing
The sprites in Fallout were highly detailed and took up a huge chunk of memory. 21 NPCs were voiced by various actors, and Ron Perlman voiced the narrator. Some NPCs feature 3D models during conversation called "talking heads", most of which were created by Scott Redenhizer. Each took eight weeks to create, and voice recording took a few months. The talking heads began as sculpted heads of clay, which the team studied to determine which parts should be most animated. The heads were digitized using a Faro Space Arm and VertiSketch, with LightWave 3D used for geometric corrections and the texture maps created in Adobe Photoshop. Much of the spoken dialogue was written by designer Mark O'Green, whose method of writing Taylor considered efficient and impressive. The companions, conceived late in development, were not easy to implement. As a result, they were riddled with glitches, including a tendency to shoot the Vault Dweller when they are obscuring an enemy. Dogmeat was the first companion added. Tycho was a reference to the desert rangers from Wasteland.
Cain wrote the prologue, which included the series catchphrase "War. War never changes". Vault Boy and his cheerful nature parodied how 1950s media downplayed the perils of nuclear war. Cain, who dislikes it when the player character knows more than the player, devised Fallout's narrative so that the Vault Dweller would know just as much as the player. The development team conceived of a faction of mutants who grew their ranks by dipping people into virus vats. During the discussion, someone wondered what would happen if more than one person was dropped into the vat. The team conceptualized the leader of the faction as a synthesis of a man, a woman, and a computer terminal mutated together. Cain enjoyed modelling, animating, and writing the Master's dialog, particularly because the Master switched between three voices: male, female, and electronic. The development team became confident in their vision after the audio director reacted to the voice-switching concept, and every department believed the Master would be a great antagonist. The Master was voiced by Jim Cummings and Kath Soucie.
The quests in Fallout were given moral ambiguity, with no clear right or wrong solutions. This was done so the player could take whatever choice suited them best. An example is the final encounter with the Master, whose motives for establishing unity among the wasteland population and making it immune to radiation by turning them into mutants could be perceived as persuasive by the player. Assistant designer Scott Bennie described the backstory of the Master, who views himself as a well-intentioned hero, as an example of their intention of "hit[ting] the player with an emotional sledgehammer as often as possible" with their story design.
## Release
Boyarsky and lead artist Jason D. Anderson created advertisements for Fallout. Fallout did not have a trailer, but a demo was released on April 26, 1997. The packaging was designed to resemble a lunch box, and the manual was designed to resemble a survival guide to reflect the game's style. Fallout was released on October 10, 1997, in North America for MS-DOS and Windows. The game was later released for Mac OS by the Interplay division MacPlay. Version 1.1 was released on November 13, 1997, patching many bugs in the original release and removing the 500-day time limit. The patch was released for the Mac OS on December 11, 1997.
Fallout was initially not released in Europe due to the player's ability to kill children in-game. Version 1.2 removed the children from Fallout and it was released at an unspecified date in Europe. MacPlay, which had become independent from Interplay, ported Fallout to Mac OS X in 2002 as part of its "Value Series". Fallout and its sequels, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, were bundled as Fallout Trilogy in April 2009. To mark its 20th anniversary, the game was made temporarily free on video game digital distribution service Steam on September 30, 2017. It was also included in Fallout Anthology in September and October 2015 and Fallout Legacy Collection in October 2019.
## Reception
Fallout received critical acclaim, critics considering it one of the best role-playing video games at the time. PC PowerPlay predicted that Fallout would revive the genre and thought that both casual gamers and fans of role-playing games would enjoy the game. GameSpot declared that because of the release of Fallout, gamers would not have to wait for a good role-playing game anymore. The Electric Playground said that they "can't think of another game that comes even close to Fallout's excellent character generation and skill system, great story, and classy delivery."
Critics praised the character system. GamePro considered it the best aspect, and Todd Vaughn of PC Gamer found the system "easy and fun to use." The Washington Post praised the "realistic tradeoffs" during customization. Computer Games Strategy Plus said the system allowed for a variety of effective character builds, and The Electric Playground and PC PowerPlay praised the game for allowing each skill to be useful. GameSpot felt that "the variety of characters that can be created and the truly different experiences that each type of character can have should satisfy even hard-core RPG players."
The post-apocalyptic setting and story were praised. The setting was lauded as refreshing for a role-playing game; Just Adventure said that Fallout abandoned the traditional fantasy-based settings of many role-playing games. Butcher said the game's appearance, sound, and ambient music delivered a believable environment, and Computer Games Strategy Plus found the mix of satire and grit well-executed. GameSpot and the Independent said the storyline was compelling. Critics commended the cinematic introduction; The Electric Playground called it "the most haunting opening movie" he had seen. Butcher praised the ability to complete quests in multiple ways, and Next Generation found the subquests to be a natural outgrowth of the main quest. Computer Gaming World, however, said the dialogue was unable to account for the player's unpredictability, resulting in out-of-order dialogue. Just Adventure considered the ending among the best in video games.
The combat received a slightly positive reception. Several reviews praised its tactical nature, and GameSpot found the targeting system satisfying. Computer Games Strategy Plus said that fans of turn-based RPGs would greatly enjoy the combat because of the wide variety of weapons. Finding the combat unrealistic, Computer Gaming World said that the turn-based system "might bore or disappoint Diablo fans, but will be welcome to most hard-core RPGers." The companions were criticized because the player could not control them directly. Vaughn said the combat was great when playing without companions and frustrating when playing with them.
### Sales
Fallout was commercially successful, although it was not as popular as other role-playing video games such as Baldur's Gate and Diablo. It did not meet sales expectations, but developed a fan following and sold enough copies for a sequel to be produced. In the United States, it debuted at No. 12 on PC Data's computer game sales rankings for October 1997. CNET Gamecenter noted that the game was part of a trend of role-playing successes that month, alongside Ultima Online and Lands of Lore 2: Guardians of Destiny, and said, "If October's list is any indication, [role-playing games] are back." Fallout sold 53,777 copies in the US by the end of 1997.
Worldwide, over 100,000 copies were shipped by December 1997, and Erik Bethke reported sales of over 120,000 copies after a year. By March 2000, 144,000 copies had been sold in the US alone. GameSpot called these "very good sales, especially since the overall [worldwide] figures are likely double those amounts". Fallout was unpopular in the United Kingdom, where sales for it and its sequel totaled just over 50,000 combined lifetime sales by 2008. In 2017, Fargo said in an interview that Fallout sold a total of 600,000 copies.
### Awards and accolades
The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Fallout for "Computer Entertainment Title of the Year", "PC Role-Playing Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Sound and Music" at the inaugural Interactive Achievement Awards. Similarly, the Computer Game Developers Conference nominated Fallout for its "Best Adventure/RPG" Spotlight Award. Fallout received GameSpot's "Best Role-Playing Game" and "Best Ending" prize; and was nominated for GameSpot's "Game of the Year". It also won Computer Games Magazine's "Role-Playing Game of the Year" award.
## Legacy
### Influence
The 1990s saw a decline in the popularity of computer role-playing games as a result of stale settings and ideas, competition with other genres, and poor quality assurance. Fallout has been credited as one of several innovative role-playing games that revived the genre's popularity. In 2000, CNET Gamecenter's Mark H. Walker wrote, "The RPG genre was clearly in a slump in the mid-'90s, but ... the renaissance began when Interplay's Fallout hit store shelves." Rowan Kaiser, writing for Engadget, called Fallout the "first modern role-playing game".
Fallout's post-apocalyptic setting was novel, as contemporary role-playing games often featured Tolkien-inspired fantasy settings. Fallout also stood out for its focus on the player character, how their choices impacted the game world, and the open-world gameplay. Matthew Byrd of Den of Geek wrote that Fallout's departure from gameplay inspired by the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, prevalent in role-playing games at the time, made it influential. Kaiser stated that any modern game with a morality system could be tied back to Fallout. At the 2012 Game Developers Conference, Cain gave a presentation about Fallout's development and noted traits that were shared by subsequent role-playing games, including open-world gameplay, ambiguous morality, and perks.
Polygon described Fallout as "one of the most influential games of its time." After leaving Interplay in 1998, Cain, Boyarsky, and Anderson formed Troika Games and created Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (2001). Cain considered Fallout a "stepping stone" to the creation of Arcanum. Years later, working for Obsidian Entertainment, Cain and Boyarsky created The Outer Worlds (2019), a role-playing video game influenced by Fallout. After the Fallout series became popular, Wasteland 2 (2014) was pitched by Fargo and developed by inXile Entertainment, which Fargo founded, with a design team featuring Anderson and Fallout composer Mark Morgan. PC Gamer found Wasteland 2 to be more similar the first two Fallout games than the original Wasteland. Other personnel from the Fallout development team have worked on games that were influenced by Fallout such as Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006) and Alpha Protocol (2008). A feature similar to the perks in Fallout, called "feats", was added to the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Other games with similar features, according to Cain, include World of Warcraft (2004) and Oblivion (2006). Both Metro 2033 (2010) and Atom RPG (2018) are post-apocalyptic games that were influenced by Fallout. Other games influenced by Fallout include Deus Ex (2000), Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse (2001), and Weird West (2022).
### Retrospective reception
Fallout continues to receive acclaim, considered one of the best role-playing games on PC. Retrospective critics consider the game innovative and praise its setting as refreshing for a role-playing game. Although The Escapist thought the game lost some of its appeal over time, they found the gameplay "intriguing, sometimes addictive". GamesRadar+ found Fallout worth returning to despite perceiving the game as outdated. Critical assessments of Fallout's quality relative to its sequels differ. GamesRadar+ ranked it low among the series, IGN ranked it in the middle, and Kotaku and Paste Magazine ranked it high.
Many critics consider the Master to be one of the best video game villains. GameSpot singled out Jim Cummings's voice acting as the Master as "chilling" and considered him "one of the most memorable antagonists in computer-gaming history." The final encounter with the Master has been lauded for its multiple solutions that took advantage of character system, with the boss fight itself being optional. Multiple journalists especially praised the option to convince the Master that he is wrong, with Kotaku describing it as "unforgettable", and UGO describing it as "fun". IGN said that this aforementioned ability proved that in role-playing games, dialogue can be just as valid as fighting. Praising the final confrontation, USGamer's Mike Williams said, "Even at its end, Fallout is about player choice, and the choices available to you are pretty clever." GamesRadar+ called the player's encounter with the Master "one of the most striking storytelling devices of its era", and IGN called it one of the series' most memorable moments.
The game has been inducted into the "Hall of Fame" (or similar award) of Computer Gaming World, GameSpot, GameSpy, and IGN. The 2002 MacPlay ports of Fallout and Fallout 2 were listed under "Best Games Rescued from Oblivion" in Macworld's "2002 Game Hall of Fame". Fallout was included in the 2010 reference book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die and was exhibited in Smithsonian American Art Museum's "The Art of Video Games" under the category of adventure games in March 2011. Fallout has been ranked as one of the best PC games of all time by PC Gamer and IGN. It has also been listed as among the greatest video games of all time by IGN and Polygon.
### Series
Fallout was followed by a series of sequels and spin-offs, often different in genre and ambiance from the original game. Cain did not work on any sequels and spin-offs beyond brainstorming for Fallout 2, and left Interplay during its development. Interplay owned the Fallout rights until 2007, when they were purchased by Bethesda Softworks. The first Bethesda-developed Fallout game was Fallout 3. The series has been acclaimed, influential among developers, and among the most popular in the video game industry. Vault Boy became the franchise's mascot and is considered iconic. Other recurring elements include the Super Mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel, the PIPBoy (known as the Pip-Boy in later games), and Power Armor.
Three sequels have been released: Fallout 2 in 1998, Fallout 3 in 2008, and Fallout 4 in 2015. All received positive reviews. Spin-offs include Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel in 2001, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel in 2004, Fallout: New Vegas in 2010, Fallout Shelter in 2015, and Fallout 76 in 2018. Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel and Fallout: New Vegas received positive reviews, while Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, Fallout Shelter, and Fallout 76 received mixed reviews.
### Other media
In 1998, Interplay wrote a script for a film adaptation of Fallout, to be produced by its Interplay Films studio. The adaptation was canceled following the dissolution of Interplay Films in 2000. Throughout 2002, Chris Avellone, a designer of Fallout 2, compiled research of Fallout's world and released a series of issues known as the Fallout Bible. Following Bethesda's acquisition of the Fallout franchise, the Fallout Bible became non-canon. Morgan released a remastered soundtrack album for Fallout on May 10, 2010. A television adaptation, with Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan as executive producers, was announced in July 2020. In 2022, Amazon approved the show for its streaming service Amazon Prime Video.
## See also
- History of Western role-playing video games
|
1,738,794 |
Anglo-Zanzibar War
| 1,173,187,091 |
1896 war, the shortest in recorded history
|
[
"1896 in Zanzibar",
"1896 in the United Kingdom",
"19th century in Africa",
"19th century in Zanzibar",
"19th-century military history of the United Kingdom",
"August 1896 events",
"Conflicts in 1896",
"Punitive expeditions of the United Kingdom",
"Sultanate of Zanzibar",
"United Kingdom–Zimbabwe relations",
"Wars involving Zanzibar",
"Wars involving the United Kingdom",
"Wars of succession involving the states and peoples of Africa"
] |
The Anglo-Zanzibar War was a military conflict fought between the United Kingdom and the Zanzibar Sultanate on 27 August 1896. The conflict lasted between 38 and 45 minutes, marking it as the shortest recorded war in history. The immediate cause of the war was the death of the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini on 25 August 1896 and the subsequent succession of Sultan Khalid bin Barghash. The British authorities preferred Hamoud bin Mohammed, who was more favourable to British interests, as sultan. In the agreement of 14 June 1890 instituting a British protectorate over Zanzibar, a candidate for accession to the sultanate should obtain the permission of the British consul, and Khalid had not fulfilled this requirement. The British considered this a casus belli and sent an ultimatum to Khalid demanding that he order his forces to stand down and leave the palace. In response, Khalid called up his palace guard and barricaded himself inside the palace.
The ultimatum expired at 09:00 local time on 27 August, by which time the British had gathered two cruisers, three gunboats, 150 marines and sailors, and 900 Zanzibaris in the harbour area. The Royal Navy contingent were under the command of Rear-Admiral Harry Rawson and the pro-Anglo Zanzibaris were commanded by Brigadier-General Lloyd Mathews of the Zanzibar army (who was also the First Minister of Zanzibar). Around 2,800 Zanzibaris defended the palace; most were recruited from the civilian population, but they also included the sultan's palace guard and several hundred of his servants and slaves. The defenders had several artillery pieces and machine guns, which were set in front of the palace sighted at the British ships. A bombardment, opened at 09:02, set the palace on fire and disabled the defending artillery. A small naval action took place, with the British sinking the Zanzibari royal yacht HHS Glasgow and two smaller vessels. Some shots were also fired ineffectually at the pro-British Zanzibari troops as they approached the palace. The flag at the palace was shot down and fire ceased at 09:46.
The sultan's forces sustained roughly 500 casualties, while only one British sailor was injured. Sultan Khalid received asylum in the German consulate before escaping to German East Africa (in the mainland part of present Tanzania). The British quickly placed Sultan Hamoud in power at the head of a puppet government. The war marked the end of the Zanzibar Sultanate as a sovereign state and the start of a period of heavy British influence.
## Background
Zanzibar was an island country in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Tanganyika; today it forms part of Tanzania. The main island, Unguja (or Zanzibar Island), had been under the nominal control of the Sultans of Oman since 1698 when they expelled the Portuguese settlers who had claimed it in 1499. Sultan Majid bin Said declared the island independent of Oman in 1858, which was recognised by the United Kingdom, and split the sultanate from that of Oman. Barghash bin Said, the second sultan and Khalid's father, had been forced by British ultimatum and a threat of blockade to abolish the slave trade in June 1873, though it was later discovered that instructions from London would have prohibited aggressive action being taken immediately if that ultimatum had been rejected.
The subsequent sultans established their capital and seat of government at Zanzibar Town where a palace complex was built on the sea front. By 1896, this consisted of the palace itself; the Beit al-Hukm, an attached harem; and the Beit al-Ajaib or "House of Wonders"—a ceremonial palace said to be the first building in East Africa to be provided with electricity. The complex was mostly constructed of local timber and was not designed as a defensive structure. All three main buildings were adjacent to one another in a line and linked by wooden covered bridges above street height.
Britain had recognised Zanzibar's sovereignty and its sultanate in 1886, after a long period of friendly interaction, and generally maintained good relations with the country and its sultans. However, Germany was also interested in East Africa, and the two powers vied for control of trade rights and territory in the area throughout the late 19th century. Sultan Khalifah had granted rights to the land of Kenya to Britain and that of Tanganyika to Germany, a process resulting in the prohibition of slavery in those lands. Many of the Arab ruling classes were upset by this interruption of a valuable trade, which resulted in some unrest. In addition, the German authorities in Tanganyika refused to fly the flag of the Zanzibar Sultanate, which led to armed clashes between German troops and the local population. One such conflict in Tanga claimed the lives of 20 Arabs.
Sultan Khalifah sent Zanzibari troops led by Brigadier-General Lloyd Mathews, a former lieutenant of the Royal Navy, to restore order in Tanganyika. The operation was largely successful, but anti-German feeling among the Zanzibari people remained strong. Further conflicts erupted at Bagamoyo, where 150 natives were killed by German military forces, and at Ketwa, where German officials and their servants were murdered. Khalifah then granted extensive trade rights to the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) who, with German assistance, established a naval blockade to halt the continuing domestic slave trade. Upon Khalifah's death in 1890 Ali bin Said ascended to the sultanate. Sultan Ali banned the domestic slave trade (but not slave ownership), declared Zanzibar a British protectorate and appointed Lloyd Mathews as First Minister to lead his cabinet. The British were also guaranteed a veto over the future appointment of sultans.
The year of Ali's ascension also saw the signing of the Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty between Britain and Germany. This treaty officially demarcated the spheres of interest in East Africa and ceded Germany's rights in Zanzibar to the United Kingdom. This granted the British government more influence in Zanzibar, which they intended to use to eradicate slavery there, an objective they had held as early as 1804.
Sultan Ali's successor was Hamad bin Thuwaini, who became sultan in 1893. Hamad maintained a close relationship with the British, but there was dissent among his subjects over the increasing British control over the country, the British-led army and the abolition of the valuable slave trade. In order to control this dissent, the British authorities authorised the sultan to raise a Zanzibari palace bodyguard of 1,000 men, but these troops were soon involved in clashes with the British-led police. Complaints about the bodyguards' activities were also received from the European residents in Zanzibar Town.
### 25 August 1896
Sultan Hamad died suddenly at 11:40 EAT (08:40 UTC) on 25 August 1896. His 29-year-old nephew Khalid bin Bargash, who was suspected by some of his assassination, moved into the palace complex at Zanzibar Town without British approval, in contravention of the treaty agreed with Ali. The British government preferred an alternative candidate, Hamoud bin Muhammed, who was more favourably disposed towards them. Khalid was warned by the consul and diplomatic agent to Zanzibar, Basil Cave, and General Mathews to think carefully about his actions. This course of action had proved successful three years earlier when Khalid had tried to claim the sultanate after the death of Ali, and the British consul-general, Rennell Rodd, had persuaded him of the dangers of such an action.
Khalid ignored Cave's warning, and his forces began mustering in the Palace Square under the command of Captain Saleh of the palace bodyguard. By the end of the day, they numbered 2,800 men armed with rifles and muskets. The majority were civilians, but the force included 700 Zanzibari Askari soldiers who had sided with Khalid. The sultan's artillery, which consisted of several Maxim machine guns, a Gatling gun, a 17th-century bronze cannon, and two 12-pounder field guns, was aimed at the British ships in the harbour. The 12-pounders had been presented to the sultan by Wilhelm II, the German emperor. The sultan's troops also took possession of the Zanzibari Navy, which consisted of one wooden sloop, the HHS Glasgow, based on the British frigate Glasgow and built as a royal yacht for the sultan in 1878.
Mathews and Cave also began to muster their forces, already commanding 900 Zanzibari askaris under Lieutenant Arthur Edward Harington Raikes of the Wiltshire Regiment who was seconded to the Zanzibar Army and held the rank of brigadier-general. 150 sailors and marines were landed from the Pearl-class protected cruiser Philomel and the gunboat Thrush, which were anchored in the harbour. The naval contingent, under the command of Captain O'Callaghan, came ashore within fifteen minutes of being requested to deal with any rioting caused by the general population. A smaller contingent of sailors under Lieutenant Watson of Thrush were put ashore to guard the British consulate, where British citizens were requested to gather for protection. HMS Sparrow, another gunboat, entered the harbour and was anchored opposite the palace next to Thrush.
Some concerns were raised among the British diplomats as to the reliability of Raikes' askaris, but they proved to be steady and professional troops hardened by military drill and several expeditions to East Africa. They later became the only land troops to be fired upon by the defenders. Raikes' troops were armed with two Maxim guns and a nine pounder cannon, and were stationed at the nearby customs house. The sultan attempted to have the US consul, Richard Dorsey Mohun, recognise his accession, but the messenger was told:
> ...as his accession had not been verified by Her Majesty's government, it is impossible to reply.
Cave continued to send messages to Khalid requesting that he stand down his troops, leave the palace and return home, but these were ignored, and Khalid replied that he would proclaim himself sultan at 15:00. Cave stated that this would constitute an act of rebellion and that Khalid's sultanate would not be recognised by the British government. At 14:30, Sultan Hamad was buried, and exactly 30 minutes later a royal salute from the palace guns proclaimed Khalid's succession. Cave could not open hostilities without government approval and telegraphed the following message to the Foreign Office of Lord Salisbury's administration in London:
> Are we authorised in the event of all attempts at a peaceful solution proving useless, to fire on the Palace from the men-of-war?
Meanwhile, Cave informed all other foreign consuls that all flags were to remain at half mast in honour of the late Hamad. The only one that did not was a large red flag flying from Khalid's palace. Cave also informed the consuls not to recognise Khalid as sultan, to which they agreed.
### 26 August
At 10:00 on 26 August, the Archer-class protected cruiser Racoon arrived at Zanzibar Town and was anchored in line with Thrush and Sparrow. At 14:00, the Edgar-class protected cruiser St George, flagship of the Cape of Good Hope and West Africa Station, steamed into the harbour. On board were Rear-Admiral Harry Rawson, the commander-in-chief, and further British marines and sailors. At around the same time Lord Salisbury's reply arrived authorising Cave and Rawson to use the resources at their disposal to remove Khalid from power. The telegraph read: "You are authorised to adopt whatever measures you may consider necessary, and will be supported in your action by Her Majesty's Government. Do not, however, attempt to take any action which you are not certain of being able to accomplish successfully."
Cave attempted further negotiations with Khalid, but these failed and Rawson sent an ultimatum, requiring him to haul down his flag and leave the palace by 09:00 on 27 August or he would open fire. During the afternoon, all merchant vessels were cleared from the harbour and the British women and children removed to St George and a British-India Steam Navigation Company vessel for their safety. That night, Consul Mohun noted that: "The silence which hung over Zanzibar was appalling. Usually drums were beating or babies cried but that night there was absolutely not a sound."
## War
### 27 August
At 08:00 on the morning of 27 August, after a messenger sent by Khalid requested parley from Cave, the consul replied that he would only have salvation if he agreed to the terms of the ultimatum. At 08:30 a further messenger from Khalid declared that "We have no intention of hauling down our flag and we do not believe you would open fire on us"; Cave replied that "We do not want to open fire, but unless you do as you are told we shall certainly do so." At 08:55, having received no further word from the palace, aboard St George Rawson hoisted the signal "prepare for action".
At exactly 09:00, General Lloyd Mathews ordered the British ships to commence the bombardment. At 09:02 Her Majesty's Ships Racoon, Thrush and Sparrow opened fire at the palace simultaneously. Thrush's first shot immediately dismounted an Arab 12-pounder cannon. Three thousand defenders, servants and slaves were present in the largely wooden palace, and even with barricades of crates, bales and rubber, there were many casualties from the high explosive shells. Despite initial reports that he had been captured and was to be exiled to India, Sultan Khalid escaped from the palace. A Reuters news correspondent reported that the sultan had "fled at the first shot with all the leading Arabs, who left their slaves and followers to carry on the fighting", but other sources state that he remained in the palace for longer. The shelling ceased at around 09:40, by which time the palace and attached harem had caught fire, the Sultan's artillery had been silenced and his flag cut down.
During the bombardment a small naval engagement occurred when, at 09:05, the obsolete Glasgow fired upon the St George using her armament of 7 nine-pounder guns and a Gatling gun, which had been a present from Queen Victoria to the sultan. The return fire caused Glasgow to sink, though the shallow harbour meant that her masts remained out of the water. Glasgow's crew hoisted a British flag as a token of their surrender, and they were all rescued by British sailors in launches. Thrush also sank two steam launches whose Zanzibari crews shot at her with rifles. Some land fighting occurred when Khalid's men fired on Raikes' askaris, with little effect, as they approached the palace. The fighting ceased with the end of the shelling. The British controlled the town and the palace, and by the afternoon Hamoud bin Muhammed, an Arab favourable to the British, had been installed as sultan with much reduced powers. The British ships and crews had fired around 500 shells, 4,100 machine gun rounds and 1,000 rifle rounds during the engagement.
## Aftermath
Approximately 500 Zanzibari men and women were killed or wounded during the bombardment, most of the dead a result of the fire that engulfed the palace. It is unknown how many of these casualties were combatants, but Khalid's gun crews were said to have been "decimated". British casualties amounted to one petty officer severely wounded aboard Thrush who later recovered. Although the majority of the Zanzibari townspeople sided with the British, the town's Indian quarter suffered from opportunistic looting, and around twenty inhabitants died in the chaos. To restore order, 150 British Sikh troops were transferred from Mombasa to patrol the streets. Sailors from St George and Philomel were landed to form a fire brigade to contain the fire, which had spread from the palace to the nearby customs sheds. There was some concern about the fire at the customs sheds as they contained a sizeable store of explosives, but no explosion occurred.
Sultan Khalid, Captain Saleh and around forty followers sought refuge in the German consulate following their flight from the palace, where they were guarded by ten armed German sailors and marines while Mathews stationed men outside to arrest them if they tried to leave. Despite extradition requests, the German consul, the recently posted Albrecht von Rechenberg, later Governor of German East Africa, refused to surrender Khalid to the British as his country's extradition treaty with Britain specifically excluded political prisoners. Instead, the German consul promised to remove Khalid to German East Africa without him "setting foot on the soil of Zanzibar". At 10:00 on 2 October, SMS Seeadler of the Imperial German Navy arrived in port; at high tide, one of Seeadler's boats made it up to the consulate's garden gate, and Khalid stepped directly from consular grounds to a German war vessel and hence was free from arrest. He was transferred from the boat onto Seeadler and was then taken to Dar es Salaam in German East Africa. Khalid was captured by British forces in 1916, during the East African Campaign of World War I, and exiled to Seychelles and Saint Helena before being allowed to return to East Africa, where he died at Mombasa in 1927. The British punished Khalid's supporters by forcing them to pay reparations to cover the cost of shells fired against them and for damages caused by the looting, which amounted to 300,000 rupees.
Sultan Hamoud was loyal to the British and acted as a figurehead for an essentially British-run government, the sultanate only being retained to avoid the costs involved with running Zanzibar directly as a crown colony. Several months after the war, Hamoud, with British prompting, abolished slavery in all its forms. The emancipation of slaves required them to present themselves to a government office and proved a slow process—within ten years only 17,293 slaves had been freed, from an estimated population of 60,000 in 1891.
The badly damaged palace complex was completely changed by the war. The harem, lighthouse and palace were demolished as the bombardment had left them unsafe. The palace site became an area of gardens, while a new palace was erected on the site of the harem. The House of Wonders was almost undamaged and would later become the main secretariat for the British governing authorities. During renovation work on the House of Wonders in 1897, a clocktower was added to its frontage to replace the lighthouse lost to the shelling. The wreck of Glasgow remained in the harbour in front of the palace, where the shallow waters ensured that her masts would remain visible for several years to come; it was eventually broken up for scrap in 1912.
The British protagonists were highly regarded by the governments in London and Zanzibar for their actions leading up to and during the war, and many were rewarded with appointments and honours. General Raikes, leader of the askaris, was appointed a First Class (Second Grade) member of the Order of the Brilliant Star of Zanzibar on 24 September 1896, a First Class member of the Zanzibari Order of Hamondieh on 25 August 1897 and later promoted to Commander of the Zanzibar armies. General Mathews, the Zanzibari army commander, was appointed a member of the Grand Order of Hamondieh on 25 August 1897 and became First Minister and Treasurer to the Zanzibari government. Basil Cave, the consul, was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 1 January 1897 and promoted to consul-general on 9 July 1903. Harry Rawson was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath for his work in Zanzibar and would later be Governor of New South Wales in Australia. Rawson was also appointed a first class member of the Order of the Brilliant Star of Zanzibar on 8 February 1897 and the Order of Hamondieh on 18 June 1898. There were no further rebellions against British influence during the remaining 67 years of the protectorate.
## Duration
The war, lasting less than three-quarters of an hour, is sometimes considered the shortest in recorded history. Several durations are given by sources, including 38, 40 and 45 minutes, but the 38-minute duration is the most often quoted. The variation is due to confusion over what actually constitutes the start and end of a war. Some sources take the start of the war as the order to open fire at 09:00 and some with the start of actual firing at 09:02. The end of the war is usually put at 09:37, when the last shots were fired and the palace flag struck, but some sources place it at 09:45. The logbooks of the British ships also suffer from this uncertainty with St George indicating that cease-fire was called and Khalid entered the German consulate at 09:35, Thrush at 09:40, Racoon at 09:41, and Philomel and Sparrow at 09:45.
|
571,299 |
Bayern-class battleship
| 1,172,955,178 |
Battleship class of the German Imperial Navy
|
[
"Battleship classes",
"Bayern-class battleships",
"World War I battleships of Germany"
] |
The Bayern class was a class of four super-dreadnought battleships built by the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy). The class comprised Bayern, Baden, Sachsen, and Württemberg. Construction started on the ships shortly before World War I; Baden was laid down in 1913, Bayern and Sachsen followed in 1914, and Württemberg, the final ship, was laid down in 1915. Only Baden and Bayern were completed, due to shipbuilding priorities changing as the war dragged on. It was determined that U-boats were more valuable to the war effort, and so work on new battleships was slowed and ultimately stopped altogether. As a result, Bayern and Baden were the last German battleships completed by the Kaiserliche Marine.
Bayern and Baden were commissioned into the fleet in July 1916 and March 1917, respectively. This was too late for either ship to take part in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916. Bayern was assigned to the naval force that drove the Imperial Russian Navy from the Gulf of Riga during Operation Albion in October 1917, though the ship was severely damaged by a mine and had to be withdrawn to Kiel for repairs. Baden replaced Friedrich der Grosse as the flagship of the High Seas Fleet, but saw no combat.
Both Bayern and Baden were interned at Scapa Flow following the Armistice in November 1918. Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, the commander of the interned German fleet, ordered his ships be sunk on 21 June 1919; Bayern was successfully scuttled, though British guards managed to beach Baden to prevent her from sinking. The ship was expended as a gunnery target in 1921. Sachsen and Württemberg, both at various stages of completion when the war ended, were broken up for scrap metal. Bayern was raised in 1934 and broken up the following year.
## Design
Design work on the class began as early as 1910, with great consideration given to the armament of the new vessels. It had become clear that other navies were moving to guns larger than 30.5 cm (12 in), and so the next German battleship would also have to incorporate larger guns. The Weapons Department suggested a 32 cm (12.6 in) gun, but during a meeting on 11 May 1910, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the State Secretary of the Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Naval Office), decided that budgetary constraints precluded the adoption of larger weapons. The following year, in the aftermath of the Agadir Crisis, Tirpitz quickly seized on public outcry over the British involvement in the crisis to pressure the Reichstag (Imperial Diet) into appropriating additional funds for the Navy. This provided the opening for more powerful battleships, so Tirpitz requested funds for ships armed with 34 cm (13.4 in) guns in mid-1911.
In August that year, the design staff prepared studies for ships armed with 35 cm (13.8 in), 38 cm (15 in), and 40 cm (15.7 in) guns; the 40 cm caliber was set as the maximum, since it was (incorrectly) assumed that British wire-wound guns larger than that could not be built. During a meeting the following month, the preferred designs were a ship armed with ten 35 cm guns in five turrets or eight 40 cm guns in four turrets. The Weapons Department advocated the 35 cm gun ship, pointing out that it would have a 25% greater chance of hitting its target. Tirpitz inquired about a mixed battery of twin and triple turrets, but after examining the gun turrets of the Austro-Hungarian dreadnoughts of the Tegetthoff class, it was determined that the triple gun turrets still had too many problems. Among these deficiencies were increased weight, reduced ammunition supply and rate of fire, and loss of fighting capability if one of the turrets was disabled.
Design studies suggested that the 35 cm ship would displace around 29,000 t (28,540 long tons; 31,970 short tons) and cost around 59.7 million marks, while the 40 cm proposal would cost approximately 60 million marks and displace 28,250 t (27,800 long tons), but both of these ships were deemed to be too expensive. The Construction Department proposed a 28,100 t (27,700 long tons) ship armed with eight 38 cm guns, which reduced the cost to 57.5 million marks per vessel. This design was adopted as the basis for the next class of battleship on 26 September, and the decision to adopt the 38 cm gun was formally taken on 6 January 1912. Work continued on the design into 1912, and included further developing the armor layout that had been adopted in the previous König class. The ships were originally projected to be armed with eight 8.8 cm (3.5 in) anti-aircraft guns, though they were not completed with any. Since the development of diesel engines was proving to be problematic, the design staff adopted traditional steam turbines for the ships, though it was hoped that by the time the third member of the class was ready to begin construction, reliable diesel engines would be available.
Funding for the vessels was allocated under the fourth Naval Law, which was passed in 1912. The Fourth Naval Law secured funding for three new dreadnoughts, two light cruisers, and an increase of an additional 15,000 officers and men in the ranks of the Navy for 1912. The capital ships laid down in 1912 were the Derfflinger-class battlecruisers; funding for Bayern and Baden was allocated the following year. Funding for Sachsen was allocated in the 1914 budget, while Württemberg was funded in the War Estimates. The last remaining Brandenburg-class pre-dreadnought, Wörth, was to be replaced, as well as two elderly Kaiser Friedrich III-class pre-dreadnoughts, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Kaiser Friedrich III. Baden was ordered as Ersatz Wörth, Württemberg as Ersatz Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Sachsen as Ersatz Kaiser Friedrich III; Bayern was regarded as an addition to the fleet, and was ordered under the provisional name "T".
### General characteristics
Bayern and Baden were 179.4 m (588 ft 7 in) long at the waterline, and an even 180 m (590 ft 7 in) long overall. Sachsen and Württemberg were slightly longer: 181.8 m (596 ft 5 in) at the waterline and 182.4 m (598 ft 5 in) overall. All four ships had a beam of 30 m (98 ft 5 in), and had a draft of between 9.3 and 9.4 m (30 ft 6 in and 30 ft 10 in). Bayern and Baden were designed to displace 28,530 t (28,080 long tons; 31,450 short tons) at a normal displacement; at full combat load, the ships displaced up to 32,200 t (31,700 long tons; 35,500 short tons). Württemberg and Sachsen were slightly heavier, at 28,800 t normal and 32,500 t fully laden. The ships were constructed with transverse and longitudinal steel frames, over which the outer hull plates were riveted. The hull was divided into 17 watertight compartments, and included a double bottom that ran for 88 percent of the length of the hull.
Bayern and Baden were regarded as exceptional sea boats by the German navy. Bayern and her sisters were stable and very maneuverable. The ships suffered slight speed loss in heavy seas; with the rudders hard over, the ships lost up to 62% speed and heeled over 7 degrees. With a metacentric height of 2.53 m (8 ft 4 in), larger than that of their British equivalents, the vessels were stable gun platforms for the confined waters of the North Sea. The ships of the Bayern class had a standard crew of 42 officers and 1,129 enlisted men; when serving as a squadron flagship, an additional 14 officers and 86 men were required. The vessels carried several smaller craft, including one picket boat, three barges, two launches, two yawls, and two dinghies.
### Machinery
Bayern and Baden were equipped with eleven coal-fired Schulz-Thornycroft boilers and three oil-fired Schulz-Thornycroft boilers in nine boiler rooms. Three sets of Parsons turbines drove three-bladed screws that were 3.87 m (12.7 ft) in diameter. Bayern's and Baden's power plant was designed to run at 34,521 shaft horsepower (25,742 kW) at 265 revolutions per minute; on trials the ships achieved 55,201 shp (41,163 kW) and 55,505 shp (41,390 kW), respectively. Both ships were capable of a maximum speed of 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph). The first two ships were designed to carry 900 t (890 long tons; 990 short tons) of coal and 200 t (200 long tons; 220 short tons) of oil, though the use of additional spaces in the hull increased the total bunkerage to 3,400 t (3,300 long tons; 3,700 short tons) of coal and 620 t (610 long tons; 680 short tons) of oil. This enabled a range of 5,000 nautical miles (9,300 km; 5,800 mi) at a speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph). At 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph), the range decreased to 4,485 nmi (8,306 km; 5,161 mi), at 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph) the range fell to 3,740 nmi (6,930 km; 4,300 mi), and at 21.5 knots (39.8 km/h; 24.7 mph) the ships could steam for only 2,390 nmi (4,430 km; 2,750 mi). The ships carried eight diesel generators; these supplied each ship with a total of 2,400 kilowatts of electrical power at 220 volts.
Sachsen and Württemberg were intended to be one knot faster than the earlier pair of ships. Württemberg received more powerful machinery that would have produced 47,343 shp (35,304 kW) for a designed speed of 22 knots. On Sachsen, a MAN diesel engine producing 11,836 bhp (8,826 kW) was to be installed on the center shaft, while steam turbines powered the outboard shafts, but the diesel engine was not ready by the end of the war, and it was only completed in 1919 for testing by the Naval Inter-Allied Control Commission. The combined power plant would have produced 53,261 shp (39,717 kW) for a designed speed of 22.5 knots.
### Armament
The Bayern-class battleships were armed with a main battery of eight 38 cm (15 in) SK L/45 guns in four Drh LC/1913 twin gun turrets. These turrets allowed for depression of the guns to −8 degrees and elevation to 16 degrees. The guns had to be returned to 2.5 degrees to reload them. The gun mountings for Bayern were later modified to allow elevation up to 20 degrees, though the changes reduced depression to −5 degrees. As originally configured, the guns had a maximum range of 20,250 m (66,440 ft), but Bayern's modified guns could reach 23,200 m (76,100 ft). Each turret was fitted with a stereo rangefinder. The main battery was supplied with a total of 720 shells or 90 rounds per gun; these were 750-kilogram (1,650 lb) shells that were light for guns of their caliber. The shell allotment was divided between armor piercing and high explosive versions, with 60 of the former and 30 of the latter. At a range of 20,000 m (66,000 ft), the armor-piercing shells could penetrate up to 336 mm (13.2 in) of steel plate. The guns had a rate of fire of around one shell every 38 seconds. Muzzle velocity was 805 meters per second (2,640 ft/s).
Post-war tests conducted by the British Royal Navy showed that the guns on Baden could be ready to fire again 23 seconds after firing; this was significantly faster than their British contemporaries, the Queen Elizabeth class, which took 36 seconds between salvos. While the German guns were faster to reload, the British inspectors found German anti-flash precautions to be significantly inferior to those that had been adopted by the Royal Navy after 1917, though this was to some degree mitigated by the brass propellant cases, which were far less susceptible to flash detonations than the silk-bagged British cordite. The guns that had been constructed for the battleships Sachsen and Württemberg were used as long-range, heavy siege guns on the Western Front, as coastal guns in occupied France and Belgium, and a few as railway guns; these guns were referred to as Langer Max.
The ships were also armed with a secondary battery of sixteen 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/45 quick-firing guns, each mounted in armored casemates in the side of the top deck. These guns were intended for defense against torpedo boats, and were supplied with a total of 2,240 shells. The guns could engage targets out to 13,500 m (44,300 ft), and after improvements in 1915, their range was extended to 16,800 m (55,100 ft). The guns had a sustained rate of fire of 5 to 7 rounds per minute. The shells were 45.3 kg (99.8 lb), and were loaded with a 13.7 kg (31.2 lb) RPC/12 propellant charge in a brass cartridge. The guns fired at a muzzle velocity of 835 meters per second (2,740 ft/s). The guns were expected to fire around 1,400 shells before they needed to be replaced. Bayern and Baden were also equipped with a pair of 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/45 flak guns, which were supplied with 800 rounds. The guns were emplaced in MPL C/13 mountings, which allowed depression to −10 degrees and elevation to 70 degrees. These guns fired 9 kg (19.8 lb) shells, and had an effective ceiling of 9,150 m (30,020 ft) at 70 degrees.
As was customary on capital ships of the period, the Bayern-class ships were armed with five 60 cm (24 in) submerged torpedo tubes. One tube was mounted in the bow and two on each broadside. A total of 20 torpedoes were carried per ship. When both Bayern and Baden struck mines in 1917, the damage incurred revealed structural weaknesses caused by the torpedo tubes and both ships had their lateral tubes removed. The torpedoes were the H8 type, which were 9 m (30 ft) long and carried a 210 kg (463 lb) Hexanite warhead. The torpedoes had a range of 8,000 m (8,700 yd) when set at a speed of 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph); at a reduced speed of 28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph), the range increased significantly to 15,000 m (16,000 yd).
### Armor
The Bayern-class ships were protected with Krupp cemented steel armor, as was the standard for German warships of the period. They had an armor belt that was 350 mm (14 in) thick in the central citadel of the ship, where the most important parts of the ship were located. This included the ammunition magazines and the machinery spaces. The belt was reduced in less critical areas, to 200 mm (7.9 in) forward and 170 mm (6.7 in) aft. The bow and stern were not protected by armor at all. A 50 mm (2 in)-thick torpedo bulkhead ran the length of the hull, several meters behind the main belt. The main armored deck was 60 mm (2.4 in) thick in most places, though the thickness of the sections that covered the more important areas of the ship was increased to 100 mm (3.9 in).
The forward conning tower was protected with heavy armor: the sides were 400 mm (16 in) thick and the roof was 170 mm thick. The rear conning tower was less well armored; its sides were only 170 mm thick and the roof was covered with 80 mm (3.1 in) of armor plate. The main battery gun turrets were also heavily armored: the turret sides were 350 mm thick and the roofs were 200 mm thick. The 15 cm guns had 170 mm thick armor plating on the casemates; the guns themselves had 80 mm thick shields to protect their crews from shell splinters.
Sachsen's armor layout was modified slightly as a result of the planned diesel engine, which was significantly taller than a turbine. A glacis over the diesel was added that was 200 mm thick on the sides, 140 mm (5.5 in) thick on either end, and 80 mm thick on top. Her belt was also slightly modified, with 30 mm (1.2 in) extending past the forward 200 mm thick section all the way to the stem.
## Construction
The class was planned to include four ships. Bayern was built by Howaldtswerke in Kiel under construction number 590; she was laid down in 1913, launched on 18 February 1915, and completed on 15 July 1916. Baden was built by the Schichau shipyard in Danzig, under construction number 913. The ship was launched on 30 October 1915 and commissioned into the fleet on 14 March 1917. Sachsen was laid down at the Germaniawerft dockyard in Kiel, under construction number 210. She was launched on 21 November 1916, but not completed. Sachsen was by then 9 months from completion. Württemberg was constructed by AG Vulcan shipyard in Hamburg under construction number 19. She was launched on 20 June 1917, but she too was not completed and scrapped in 1921. At the time of cancellation, Württemberg was approximately 12 months from completion.
### Ships
## Service history
### Fleet sortie of 18–19 August 1916
During the fleet sortie on 18–19 August 1916, I Scouting Group, which was the battlecruiser reconnaissance force of the High Seas Fleet and commanded by Admiral Franz von Hipper, was to bombard the coastal town of Sunderland in an attempt to draw out and destroy Beatty's battlecruisers. As Moltke and Von der Tann were the only two remaining German battlecruisers still in fighting condition after the Battle of Jutland, three dreadnoughts were assigned to the unit for the operation: Bayern, and the two König-class ships Markgraf and Grosser Kurfürst. Admiral Scheer and the rest of the High Seas Fleet, with 15 dreadnoughts of its own, would trail behind and provide cover. The British were aware of the German plans and sortied the Grand Fleet to meet them. By 14:35, Scheer had been warned of the Grand Fleet's approach and, unwilling to engage the whole of the Grand Fleet just 11 weeks after the decidedly close call at Jutland, turned his forces around and retreated to German ports.
### Operation Albion
In early September 1917, following the German conquest of the Russian port of Riga, the German navy decided to evict the Russian naval forces that still held the Gulf of Riga. To this end, the Admiralstab (the Navy High Command) planned an operation to seize the Baltic islands of Ösel, particularly the Russian gun batteries on the Sworbe peninsula. On 18 September, the order was issued for a joint Army-Navy operation to capture Ösel and Moon islands; the primary naval component was to comprise the flagship, the battlecruiser Moltke, along with III Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet. V Division included the four König-class battleships, and was by this time augmented with Bayern. VI Division consisted of the five Kaiser-class battleships. Along with nine light cruisers, 3 torpedo boat flotillas, and dozens of mine warfare ships, the entire force numbered some 300 ships, and were supported by over 100 aircraft and 6 zeppelins. The invasion force amounted to approximately 24,600 officers and enlisted men. Opposing the Germans were the old Russian pre-dreadnoughts Slava and Tsesarevich, the armored cruisers Bayan, Admiral Makarov, and Diana, 26 destroyers, and several torpedo boats and gunboats. The garrison on Ösel numbered some 14,000 men.
The operation began on 12 October, when Moltke, Bayern, and the Königs began firing on the Russian shore batteries at Tagga Bay. Simultaneously, the Kaisers engaged the batteries on the Sworbe peninsula; the objective was to secure the channel between Moon and Dagö islands, which would block the only escape route of the Russian ships in the gulf. Both Grosser Kurfürst and Bayern struck mines while maneuvering into their bombardment positions; damage to the former was minimal, and the ship remained in action. Bayern was severely damaged, and temporary repairs proved ineffective. The ship had to be withdrawn to Kiel for repairs; the return trip took 19 days.
### Fleet sortie of 23–24 April 1918
In late 1917, the High Seas Fleet began to conduct anti-convoy raids with light craft in the North Sea between Britain and Norway. On 17 October, the German light cruisers Brummer and Bremse intercepted a convoy of twelve ships escorted by a pair of destroyers and destroyed it; only three transports managed to escape. On 12 December, four German destroyers intercepted and annihilated another convoy of five ships and two escorting destroyers. This prompted Admiral David Beatty, the Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet, to detach several battleships and battlecruisers to protect the convoys in the North Sea. This presented to Admiral Scheer the opportunity for which he had been waiting the entire war: the chance to isolate and eliminate a portion of the Grand Fleet.
At 05:00 on 23 April 1918, the entire High Seas Fleet, including Bayern and Baden, left harbor with the intention of intercepting one of the heavily escorted convoys. Wireless radio traffic was kept to a minimum to prevent the British from learning of the operation. At 05:10 on 24 April, the battlecruiser Moltke suffered severe mechanical problems and had to be towed back to Wilhelmshaven. By 14:10, the convoy had still not yet been located, and so Scheer turned the High Seas Fleet back towards German waters. In fact, there was no convoy sailing on 24 April; German naval intelligence had miscalculated the sailing date by one day.
### Wilhelmshaven mutiny
In October 1918, Admiral Hipper, now the commander of the entire High Seas Fleet, planned for a final battle with the Grand Fleet. Admiral Reinhard Scheer, the Chief of the Naval Staff, approved the plan on 27 October; the operation was set for the 30th. When the fleet was ordered to assemble in Wilhelmshaven on 29 October, war-weary crews began to desert or openly disobey their orders. Crews aboard the battleships König, Kronprinz, and Markgraf demonstrated for peace. The crew aboard Thüringen was the first to openly mutiny; Helgoland and Kaiserin joined as well. By the evening of the 29th, red flags of revolution flew from the masts of dozens of warships in the harbor. In spite of this, Hipper decided to hold a last meeting aboard Baden—his flagship—to discuss the operation with the senior officers of the fleet. The following morning, it was clear the mutiny was too far gone to permit a fleet action. In an attempt to suppress the revolt, he ordered one of the battle squadrons to depart for Kiel. By 5 November, red flags had been raised on every battleship in the harbor except König, though it too was commandeered by a sailors' council on 6 November.
### Fate
Following the armistice with Germany in November 1918, the majority of the High Seas Fleet was to be interned in the British naval base at Scapa Flow. Bayern was listed as one of the ships to be handed over, though Baden initially was not. The battlecruiser Mackensen, which the British believed to be completed, was requested instead. When it became apparent to the Allies that Mackensen was still under construction, Baden was ordered to replace it. On 21 November 1918, the ships to be interned, under the command of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, sailed from their base in Germany for the last time. The fleet rendezvoused with the light cruiser HMS Cardiff, before meeting a massive flotilla of some 370 British, American, and French warships for the voyage to Scapa Flow. Baden arrived at Scapa Flow separately on 14 December 1918.
When the ships were interned, they had their guns disabled through the removal of their breech blocks. The fleet remained in captivity during the negotiations that ultimately produced the Versailles Treaty. It became apparent to Reuter that the British intended to seize the German ships on 21 June, which was the deadline for Germany to have signed the peace treaty. To prevent this, he decided to scuttle his ships at the first opportunity. On the morning of 21 June, the British fleet left Scapa Flow to conduct training maneuvers; at 11:20 Reuter transmitted the order to his ships. Bayern sank at 14:30, but Baden was run aground by British guards; she was the only capital ship that was not sunk. After being refloated and thoroughly examined, Baden was expended as a gunnery target, finally being sunk on 16 August 1921 to the southwest of Portsmouth. Bayern was raised for scrapping on 1 September 1934 and broken up over the following year in Rosyth.
The uncompleted Sachsen and Württemberg were stricken from the German Navy under the terms of Article 186 of the Versailles Treaty. Sachsen was sold for scrapping in 1920 to ship breakers at the Kiel Arsenal. Württemberg was sold the following year, and broken up in Hamburg.
|
35,185,314 |
Abbasid invasion of Asia Minor (806)
| 1,159,682,430 |
Abbasid invasion against the Byzantine Empire
|
[
"800s conflicts",
"800s in the Byzantine Empire",
"806",
"9th century in the Abbasid Caliphate",
"Abbasid–Byzantine wars",
"Byzantine Anatolia",
"Harun al-Rashid",
"Invasions by the Abbasid Caliphate",
"Military raids"
] |
The 806 invasion of Asia Minor was the largest of a long series of military operations launched by the Abbasid Caliphate against the Byzantine Empire. The expedition took place in southeastern and central Asia Minor, where the two states shared a long land border.
Upon coming to the throne, the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros I (r. 802–811) ceased paying the tribute agreed to by his predecessors with the Caliphate, and launched attacks on the Abbasid frontier regions. The Abbasid caliph, Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809), who sought to promote himself as a champion of jihad, decided to lead in person a retaliatory attack with the objective of punishing the Byzantines and impressing Abbasid influence upon their emperor.
Harun assembled his army at Raqqa in northern Syria. Medieval historians record numbers to be as high as 135,000 or even 300,000 men. While these are clearly exaggerated, it is clear that the Abbasid force assembled for the invasion was far larger than anything seen before. The Abbasid army set out from Raqqa on 11 June 806, crossed the coastal region of Cilicia and the Taurus Mountains, and invaded the Byzantine province of Cappadocia. The Abbasids met no opposition and raided at will, capturing several towns and fortresses. Celebrated in Arab histories was the siege, fall, and sack of the city of Herakleia; its name was later given to a victory monument erected by the Caliph near Raqqa. The Byzantine losses forced Nikephoros to seek peace terms in which he offered a resumption of tribute payments in exchange for the Abbasids' withdrawal. However, this time Harun exacted an additional personal tax levied on the Emperor and his son and heir, Staurakios, as a token of their submission to the Caliph.
Almost immediately following Harun's departure, Nikephoros violated the peace terms by refortifying the sacked frontier forts and stopping tribute payments. However, Harun's preoccupation with a rebellion in Khurasan, and his death three years later, prevented a reprisal on a similar scale to 806. Smaller-scale raids continued on both sides, but the Abbasid civil war, which began after 809, and the Byzantine preoccupation with the Bulgars contributed to a cessation of large-scale Arab–Byzantine conflict for the next two decades.
## Background
The deposition of Byzantine empress Irene of Athens in October 802 and the accession of Nikephoros I in her place marked the start of a more violent phase in the long history of the Arab–Byzantine wars. Following a series of destructive annual raids into Byzantine Asia Minor by the Abbasid Caliphate, Irene apparently secured a truce with Caliph Harun al-Rashid in 798 in exchange for the annual payment of tribute, repeating the terms agreed for a three-year truce after Harun's first large-scale campaign into Asia Minor in 782. Nikephoros, on the other hand, was more warlike—a Syriac source records that when he learned of Nikephoros's accession, a Byzantine renegade warned the Abbasid governor of Upper Mesopotamia to "throw away his silk and put on his armour". In addition, the new emperor was determined to refill the treasury by, among other measures, ceasing the tribute.
In retaliation for the cessation of tribute and the violation of the peace agreement concluded with Irene, Harun launched a raid under his son al-Qasim in spring 803. Nikephoros could not respond to this, as he faced a large-scale revolt of the Byzantine army of Asia Minor under its commander-in-chief, Bardanes Tourkos. After disposing of Bardanes, Nikephoros assembled his army and marched out to meet a second, larger invasion under the Caliph in person. After Harun raided the frontier region, the two armies faced one another for two months in central Asia Minor, but it did not come to a battle: Nikephoros and Harun exchanged letters, until the Emperor arranged for a withdrawal and a truce for the remainder of the year in exchange for a one-off payment of tribute.
In the next year, 804, an Abbasid force under Ibrahim ibn Jibril crossed the Taurus Mountains into Asia Minor. Nikephoros set out to confront the Arabs, but was surprised and heavily defeated at the Battle of Krasos, where he barely escaped with his life. Preoccupied with trouble in Khurasan, whose governor, Ali ibn Isa ibn Mahan, had aroused the opposition of the local inhabitants, Harun once more accepted tribute and made peace. An exchange of prisoners was also arranged and took place during the winter at the border of the two empires on the Lamos in Cilicia: some 3700 Muslims were exchanged for the Byzantines taken captive in the previous years.
Harun then departed for Rayy to deal with the trouble in Khurasan, leaving al-Qasim to watch over the Byzantine frontier. In the spring of 805, Nikephoros used the opportunity to rebuild the destroyed walls of the towns of Safsaf, Thebasa, and Ancyra. In the summer of the same year, he launched the first Byzantine raid in two decades against the Arab frontier districts (thughur) in Cilicia. The Byzantine army raided the territory surrounding the fortresses of Mopsuestia and Anazarbus and took prisoners as it went. The garrison of Mopsuestia attacked the Byzantine force and recovered most of the prisoners and spoils, but the Byzantines marched on to Tarsus, which had been refortified and repopulated on Harun's orders in 786 to strengthen the Muslim hold on Cilicia. The city fell and the entire garrison was taken captive.
At the same time, another Byzantine force raided the Upper Mesopotamian thughur and unsuccessfully besieged the fortress of Melitene, while a Byzantine-instigated rebellion against the local Arab garrison began in Cyprus, which for over a century had been an Arab–Byzantine condominium.
This sudden resumption of Byzantine offensive activity greatly alarmed Harun, especially as he received reports that Nikephoros was planning similar attacks for the next year, which this time would aim at the full reoccupation of these frontier territories. As the historian Warren Treadgold writes, if the Byzantines had been successful in this endeavour, "garrisoning Tarsus and Melitene would have partly blocked the main Arab invasion routes across the Taurus into the Byzantine heartland, to the Byzantines' great benefit". On the other hand, Nikephoros was certainly aware of the huge superiority of the Caliphate in men and resources, and it is more likely that he intended this campaign simply as a show of strength and a test of his enemy's resolve.
## Campaign
Having settled matters in Khurasan by confirming Ibn Mahan in his governorship, Harun returned to the west in November 805 and prepared a huge retaliatory expedition for 806, drawing men from Syria, Palestine, Persia, and Egypt. According to al-Tabari, his army numbered 135,000 regular troops and additional volunteers and freebooters. These numbers are easily the largest ever recorded for the entire Abbasid era, and about half as many as the estimated strength of the entire Byzantine army. Although they—and the even more fantastic claims of the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes the Confessor of 300,000 men—are certainly exaggerated, they are nevertheless indicative of the size of the Abbasid force. At the same time, a naval force under his admiral Humayd ibn Ma'yuf al-Hajuri was prepared to raid Cyprus.
The huge invasion army departed Harun's residence of Raqqa in northern Syria on 11 June 806, with the Caliph at its head. Al-Tabari reports that Harun put on a cap with the inscription "Warrior for the Faith and Pilgrim" (in Arabic, "ghazi, hajj"). The Abbasids crossed Cilicia, where Harun ordered Tarsus to be rebuilt, and entered Byzantine Cappadocia through the Cilician Gates. Harun marched to Tyana, which at the time seems to have been abandoned. There, he began to establish his base of operations, ordering Uqbah ibn Ja'far al-Khuza'i to refortify the town and erect a mosque.
Harun's lieutenant Abdallah ibn Malik al-Khuza'i took Sideropalos. From there, Harun's cousin Dawud ibn Isa ibn Musa moved to pillage central Cappadocia, with half the Abbasid army—some 70,000 men according to al-Tabari. Another of Harun's generals, Sharahil ibn Ma'n ibn Za'ida, captured the so-called "Fortress of the Slavs" (Hisn al-Saqalibah) and the recently rebuilt town of Thebasa, while Yazid ibn Makhlad captured the "Fort of the Willow" (al-Safsaf) and Malakopea. Andrasos was captured and Kyzistra was placed under siege, while raiders reached as far as Ancyra, which they did not capture.
Harun himself, with the other half of his forces, went west and captured the strongly fortified city of Herakleia after a month-long siege in August or September. The city was plundered and razed, and its inhabitants enslaved and deported to the Caliphate. The fall of Herakleia was considered by the Arab chroniclers the most significant achievement of Harun's expeditions against the Byzantines, and is the central event in the narratives of Harun's retaliatory campaign against Nikephoros. As the historian Marius Canard remarks, "for the Arabs the capture of Herakleia had an impact as profound as the Sack of Amorium in 838", which is completely at odds with the city's actual importance. Indeed, the Byzantine sources do not place any particular emphasis on the fall of Herakleia compared to the other fortresses captured during Harun's 806 campaign.
At the same time, on Cyprus, Humayd ravaged the island and took some 16,000 Cypriots, including the local archbishop, captive to Syria, where they were sold as slaves.
Nikephoros, outnumbered and threatened by the Bulgars in his rear, could not resist the Abbasid onslaught. He campaigned himself at the head of his army and seemingly won a few minor engagements against isolated detachments, but stayed well clear of the main Abbasid forces. In the end, with the harrowing possibility of the Arabs wintering on Byzantine soil in Tyana, he sent three clerics as ambassadors: Michael, the bishop of Synnada, Peter, the abbot of the monastery of Goulaion, and Gregory, the steward of the metropolis of Amastris. Harun agreed to peace in exchange for the payment of an annual tribute (30,000 gold nomismata, according to Theophanes, 50,000 according to al-Tabari), but the Emperor and his son and heir, Staurakios, were to pay a humiliating personal poll-tax (jizya) of three gold coins each to the Caliph (four and two respectively, in Tabari's version), thereby acknowledging themselves as the Caliph's subjects. In addition, Nikephoros promised not to rebuild the dismantled forts. Harun then recalled his forces from their various sieges and evacuated Byzantine territory.
## Aftermath
The agreement of peace terms was followed by a friendly exchange between the two rulers, related by al-Tabari: Nikephoros asked Harun for a young Byzantine woman, one of the candidate brides for his son Staurakios, who had been taken captive when Herakleia fell, and for some perfume. According to al-Tabari,
> [Harun] ordered the slave girl to be sought out; she was brought back, adorned with finery and installed on a seat in the tent in which he himself was lodging. The slave girl and the tent, together with its contents, vessels and fittings, were handed over to Nikephoros's envoy. He also sent to Nikephoros the perfume which he had requested, and he further sent to him dates, dishes of jellied sweets, raisins and healing drugs.
Nikephoros returned the favour by dispatching a horse laden with 50,000 silver coins, 100 satin garments, 200 garments of fine brocade, 12 falcons, four hunting dogs, and three more horses. But as soon as the Arabs had withdrawn, the Emperor again restored the frontier forts and thereafter ceased the payment of tribute. Theophanes records that Harun unexpectedly returned and seized Thebasa in retaliation, but this is not corroborated elsewhere.
The Arabs did launch a series of retaliatory raids in the next year, but the spring raid under Yazid ibn Makhlad al-Hubayri al-Fazari was soundly defeated, with Yazid himself falling in the field. The larger summer raid under Harthama ibn A'yan was met by Nikephoros in person, and after an indecisive battle both sides retreated. The Byzantines raided the region of Marash in return, while in late summer Humayd launched a major naval raid, which pillaged Rhodes and reached as far as the Peloponnese, where it may have fomented a rebellion among the local Slavs. On his return, however, Humayd lost several ships to a storm, and on the Peloponnese, the Slavic revolt was put down after failing to capture the city of Patras. The failure of the year's Abbasid efforts were compounded by the outbreak of Rafi ibn al-Layth's rebellion in Khurasan, which forced Harun to depart again for the East. The Caliph concluded a new truce, and another prisoner exchange was held at the Lamos in 808. Nikephoros was thus left with his gains, both the restored frontier fortifications and the cessation of tribute, intact.
## Impact
Harun's massive expedition achieved remarkably little in material terms. Despite the sack of Herakleia, and its prominent treatment in Arab sources, no permanent result was achieved, as Nikephoros was quick to violate the terms of the truce. According to the historian Warren Treadgold, if Harun had taken the advice offered by one of his lieutenants to proceed further west and sack a major city, he might have inflicted more long-lasting damage on Byzantium, but the Caliph's objectives were more limited: Harun was content with a show of force that would intimidate Nikephoros and prevent him from repeating the offensive of 805, and which bolstered his credentials as a champion of Islam. In that regard, the Abbasid campaign was certainly a success: after 806, the Byzantine ruler abandoned whatever expansionist plans he may have had for the eastern border and focused his energy on his fiscal reforms, the recovery of the Balkans, and his wars there against the Bulgars, which would end with his death in the disastrous Battle of Pliska in 811.
On the other hand, the historian M. A. Shaban considers the campaign a "limited success" at best, and criticizes Harun's "single-minded" attention to the Byzantines as a "totally misguided effort". According to Shaban, not only did the Byzantines have no real ability (or intention) to seriously threaten the Caliphate, but Harun's recruitment drive led to the influx of eastern soldiers from Khurasan, which antagonized the traditional Syrian–Iraqi military elites and created rifts that contributed to the Fourth Fitna, the Abbasid civil war that broke out after Harun's death. This conflict, between Harun's sons al-Amin (r. 809–813) and al-Ma'mun (r. 813–833), meant that the Abbasid Caliphate was not able to exploit the Byzantine reversals in the Balkans. Indeed, the 806 campaign and the ineffectual raids of 807 mark the last major, centrally organized, Abbasid expeditions against Byzantium for over twenty years. Isolated raids and counter-raids continued at land as well as at sea, and, independently of the Abbasids, local Muslim leaders conquered Crete and launched the conquest of Sicily in the 820s. Nevertheless, large-scale operations over the land border in eastern Asia Minor between the two empires resumed only after the accession of Emperor Theophilos (r. 829–842), whose confrontations with the caliphs al-Ma'mun and al-Mu'tasim (r. 833–842) culminated in the great invasions by al-Ma'mun in 830–833, and the Sack of Amorium by al-Mu'tasim in 838.
The longest-lasting impact of Harun's campaign is found in literature. Among the Arabs, several legends or anecdotes, related by sources such as al-Masudi and the Kitab al-Aghani, were associated with it, emphasizing the city's strong fortifications, describing a single combat between a Byzantine and an Arab champion which was decided when the Arab captured the Byzantine by using a lasso, or the terror inspired among the defenders by the Abbasid army's use of large catapults throwing Greek fire-like substances. The Ottoman Turks also placed great importance on Harun's battles with the Byzantines. The account of the 17th-century Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi mixes the events of Harun's 782 campaign, when the Arab army had reached the Bosporus, with those of 806, as well as introducing clearly fictional elements such as the manner of Nikephoros' death. According to Evliya, Harun besieged Constantinople twice. The first time the Caliph withdrew, after securing as much land as an oxhide could cover and building a fortress there, in an imitation of the ancient tale of Queen Dido. The second time, Harun marched on Constantinople to avenge the massacre of Muslims living there, and ordered Nikephoros executed by hanging at the Hagia Sophia.
To commemorate his successful campaign, Harun built a victory monument about 8 kilometres (5 mi) west of Raqqa, his principal residence. Known as Hiraqla [de] in local tradition, apparently after Herakleia, it comprises a square structure with sides 100 metres (330 ft) long, surrounded by a circular wall about 500 metres (1,600 ft) in diameter, pierced by four gates in the cardinal directions. The main structure, built from stone taken from churches demolished on Harun's orders in 806–807, has four vaulted halls on the ground floor, and ramps leading to an upper storey, which was left incomplete on Harun's departure for Khurasan and subsequent death.
|
47,262,498 |
RAAF area commands
| 1,074,833,901 |
Royal Australian Air Force command system
|
[
"RAAF commands",
"Structure of contemporary air forces"
] |
Area commands were the major operational and administrative formations of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) between 1940 and 1954. Established in response to the outbreak of World War II, they underpinned the Air Force's geographically based command-and-control system for the duration of the conflict and into the early years of the Cold War, until being superseded by a functional control system made up of Home, Training, and Maintenance Commands.
The area commands and their responsibilities evolved over time according to changing circumstances. The RAAF established four commands to begin with in 1940–41: Southern Area, Central Area, Western Area, and Northern Area. They oversaw most of the operations, training and maintenance within their boundaries. A concession to functional control occurred in mid-1941, when the Air Force formed two groups that assumed the training role of the southern and eastern states; Central Area was disbanded and most of its units taken over by Northern and Southern Areas, and the newly formed No. 2 (Training) Group. The area structure was further revised in 1942, following the outbreak of the Pacific War; Northern Area was split into North-Eastern Area and North-Western Area, and a new command, Eastern Area, was created, making a total of five commands. The same year, the RAAF formed two functional groups that assumed the maintenance role of the area commands; the latter focussed on operations until the end of hostilities. A new area command covering RAAF units in New Guinea, Northern Command, was formed in 1944 and dissolved soon after the war.
By the early 1950s, most operational units were based within Eastern Area Command, most Air Force training was controlled by Southern Area Command, and maintenance was the responsibility of Maintenance Group. The area command structure was no longer considered appropriate for delivering the concentration of force necessary for combat, and the Federal government decided to replace it with a functional command-and-control system. In 1953, Eastern Area Command was re-formed as Home Command (controlling operations), Southern Area Command was re-formed as Training Command, and Maintenance Group was re-designated Maintenance Command. The three remaining area commands ceded their authority to the functional commands in 1954, and were disbanded by the end of 1956.
## History
### Origin and purpose
On the eve of World War II, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) comprised twelve flying squadrons, two aircraft depots and a flying school, situated at five air bases: Point Cook and Laverton in Victoria; Richmond and Rathmines in New South Wales; and Pearce in Western Australia. An air force of this size did not require large-scale operational formations such as wings, groups, or commands, as all units could be directly administered and controlled by RAAF Headquarters in Melbourne. With the onset of war in September 1939, the Australian Air Board decided to implement a decentralised form of command and control, commensurate with an envisioned increase in manpower and units. The RAAF's initial move in this direction was to create Nos. 1 and 2 Groups in November 1939, the former based in Melbourne to control units in Victoria, and the latter in Sydney to control units in New South Wales.
In January 1940, the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Vice-Marshal Jimmy Goble, proposed organising the RAAF along functional lines with Home Defence, Training, and Maintenance Commands, but the Federal government did not take up this plan. Goble was replaced in February by a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Burnett, who focussed on rapid expansion of the RAAF to meet the needs of the Empire Air Training Scheme and believed that Australia's huge land mass would make a functional command system unwieldy. He proceeded to reorganise the Air Force into a geographically based "area" system. The roles of each area command were the same: air defence, protection of adjacent sea lanes, and aerial reconnaissance. Each area was led by an Air Officer Commanding (AOC) who was responsible for the administration and operations of all bases and units within his boundary. Exceptions to this policy included aircraft depots and the Central Flying School that trained flying instructors, as their range of responsibilities crossed area boundaries and therefore came under the direct control of RAAF Headquarters. The static area system was primarily defensive in nature, but considered well-suited to training new pilots, who could be instructed at flying schools and mentored through their initial squadron postings, all within the same geographical region.
### Evolution and control
The RAAF planned four area commands initially: Southern Area, covering all units in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and the southern Riverina district of New South Wales; Central Area, covering units in New South Wales except southern Riverina and the north of the state; Western Area, covering units in Western Australia; and Northern Area, covering units in northern New South Wales, Queensland, Northern Territory and Papua. The first two commands established, in March 1940, were Southern Area, which essentially took over the role and headquarters of No. 1 Group in Melbourne, and Central Area, which evolved from No. 2 Group in Sydney. Western and Northern Areas eventually followed in January and May 1941, respectively; pending their formation, units in Queensland were temporarily controlled by Central Area Command, and those in Western Australia, Northern Territory and Papua came under the direct control of RAAF Headquarters.
By mid-1941, RAAF Headquarters had determined to form training units in the southern and eastern states into semi-geographical, semi-functional groups separate to the area commands. This led to the establishment in August of No. 1 (Training) Group in Melbourne, covering Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, and No. 2 (Training) Group in Sydney, covering New South Wales and Queensland. Central Area was then disbanded and its responsibilities "divided as convenient", according to the official history of the war, between Southern Area, Northern Area, and No. 2 (Training) Group. Western Area retained responsibility for training, as well as operations and maintenance, within its boundaries.
With the outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941, Northern Area was split the following month into North-Western and North-Eastern Areas, to counter distinct Japanese threats to Northern Australia and New Guinea, respectively. Southern Area was also considered appropriate for subdivision owing to its size, so Eastern Area was established in May 1942 to take over control of operational units in New South Wales and southern Queensland. These arrangements stabilised the number of area commands at five. Of necessity, the two northerly commands were primarily responsible for bombing and air defence, while the other commands focussed on maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare. Further convergence of command-and-control responsibilities along semi-geographical, semi-functional lines took place between June and September 1942, when authority over maintenance units was transferred from the area commands to the newly formed No. 4 (Maintenance) Group in Melbourne and No. 5 (Maintenance) Group in Sydney. Some fine-tuning of the area boundaries occurred in August: as well as the Northern Territory, North-Western Area was given responsibility for the portion of Western Australia north of a line drawn south-east from Yampi Sound to the Northern Territory border, and part of Queensland adjacent to the Barkly Tableland.
Until 1942, RAAF Headquarters exercised complete operational and administrative control over the area commands. In April that year, Allied Air Forces (AAF) Headquarters was established under General Douglas MacArthur's South West Pacific Area (SWPA), with operational authority over all RAAF combat infrastructure, including the area commands. In September the new AAF commander, Major General George Kenney, formed the majority of his US flying units into Fifth Air Force, and most of their Australian counterparts into RAAF Command, led by Air Vice-Marshal Bill Bostock. Bostock exercised control of Australian air operations through the area commands, although RAAF Headquarters continued to hold overarching administrative authority, meaning that Bostock and his area commanders were ultimately dependent for supplies and equipment on the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Vice-Marshal George Jones, who had taken over from Burnett in May 1942.
To help overcome the static nature of the area command system, in September 1942 the RAAF created a large mobile formation known as No. 9 (Operational) Group, a self-contained tactical air force that could keep pace with Allied advances north through New Guinea and towards Japan. By April 1944, No. 9 Group had become a garrison force in New Guinea and lost its mobile function to No. 10 (Operational) Group (later the Australian First Tactical Air Force). No. 9 Group was therefore re-formed as a dedicated area command covering air units in New Guinea; Bostock had recommended calling it Northern Area, before RAAF Headquarters settled on Northern Command. In August that year, RAAF Headquarters proposed disbanding the training and maintenance groups formed in 1941–42 and return their functions to the control of the area commands, but no action was taken. The same month, the Air Board recommended carving a new Central Area Command out of Eastern Area, which it considered too large to be controlled by one headquarters. This proposed Central Area would have been responsible for units in southern Queensland but the War Cabinet deferred its decision, as it had when a similar concept was raised in October 1943.
Near the end of the war, No. 11 Group was formed on Morotai in the Dutch East Indies, using elements of Northern Command and the First Tactical Air Force; this freed the latter from garrison duties following the liberation of Borneo. In recommending the Morotai garrison's establishment, Bostock explained that while it shared the static characteristic of an area command, it differed in that the area commands were part of the permanent structure of the Air Force and situated within the borders of Australia's mainland and overseas territories, whereas the new formation was a temporary wartime measure, headquartered on foreign territory.
### Post-war organisation and supersession
Following the end of the Pacific War in August 1945, SWPA was dissolved and the Air Board again assumed full control of all its operational formations. Nos. 1 and 2 (Training) Groups, and No. 5 (Maintenance) Group, were disbanded between January and March 1946. Northern Command, having been re-designated Northern Area in December 1945, was disbanded in February 1947. The other area commands continued to function with essentially the same boundaries as during the war, except that North-Western Area no longer covered the Dutch East Indies.
In the aftermath of the war, a geographically based command-and-control system was considered outmoded, and calls came to replace it with a system based on function. Bostock, who found the area boundaries "arbitrary", proposed a functional structure consisting of operational, maintenance, and training commands. With hindsight, the area commands were judged adequate for the organisation of the Air Force in the early years of World War II, but not for the rapid response times and concentration of force necessary to properly prepare for attacks on Australia following the start of the Pacific War, nor for conducting offensive operations from 1943 onwards. Air Marshal Jones, who had retained his position as Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) following the war, resisted pressure to replace the area structure. He was persuaded by his staff to set up a conference to discuss the possibility of change, but participation by the CAS, who had been satisfied with the wartime system, and the area commanders themselves, whose positions were on the line, was half-hearted at best. Jones did suggest reducing the number of area commands to three (Northern Area to cover Queensland and the Northern Territory, Eastern Area to cover New South Wales, and Southern Area to encompass Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania) as part of a much larger proposal to restructure the post-war RAAF, but this never eventuated.
The Federal government retired Jones in February 1952 and replaced him with an RAF officer, Air Marshal Donald Hardman, who was well versed in the functional command system employed in Britain. Hardman believed that restructuring the Air Force would remove inefficiencies and duplication, and permit commanders greater autonomy, allowing more effective concentration of strength in a potential combat situation. He declared that the RAAF was "the one force that could quickly strike for Australia's and the Commonwealth's defence in South East Asia". To this end he proposed reorganising command and control of the Air Force according to three major functions: operations, covering home defence and mobile task forces; training, including all permanent, reserve and national service recruitment and instruction; and maintenance, responsible for supply, equipment and other logistical services. The three functions were duly constituted in October 1953 as Home, Training, and Maintenance Commands, respectively.
Home Command was formed from the existing Eastern Area Command, which was considered a de facto operational organisation owing to the preponderance of such forces within its boundaries. Training Command was formed from Southern Area Command, as it was already the hub of training services, controlling those in New South Wales and Queensland as well as Victoria and South Australia. Maintenance Command was formed from the extant Maintenance Group—as No. 4 (Maintenance) Group had been known since July 1947—headquartered in Melbourne. The transition to a functional system was completed in February 1954, when the three new commands assumed control of all operations, training and maintenance from Western, North-Western, and North-Eastern Area Commands. The headquarters of these three area commands remained in existence but only, according to the Melbourne Argus, as "remote control points" for Home Command. North-Western Area Command was disbanded in June 1955, Western Area Command in November 1956, and North-Eastern Area Command in December 1956.
### Aftermath
The functional commands established in 1953–54 were revised in 1959. Home Command was renamed Operational Command, and Training and Maintenance Commands merged to become Support Command. Operational Command was renamed Air Command in 1987, and three years later Support Command split into Logistics Command and Training Command. In 1997, logistics management became the responsibility of Support Command (Air Force), the RAAF component of the Defence-wide Support Command Australia (later subsumed by the Defence Materiel Organisation). Training Command was re-formed as Air Force Training Group, a force element group under Air Command, in 2006. Air Command became the sole command-level organisation in the RAAF.
## Summary of area commands formed
The RAAF raised eight area commands over the course of World War II, and five of them continued to operate into the 1950s:
## RAAF organisation chart
|
12,489,185 |
White-naped xenopsaris
| 1,170,108,503 |
Species of bird in South America
|
[
"Birds described in 1869",
"Birds of Argentina",
"Birds of Bolivia",
"Birds of Brazil",
"Birds of Paraguay",
"Birds of Venezuela",
"Birds of the Pantanal",
"Taxa named by Hermann Burmeister",
"Taxonomy articles created by Polbot",
"Tityridae"
] |
The white-naped xenopsaris (Xenopsaris albinucha), also known as the reed becard and white-naped becard, is a species of suboscine bird in the family Tityridae, the only member of the genus Xenopsaris. It is found in South America, in humid subtropical and tropical savanna climates in most of the countries east of the Andes: Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina. Living in open woodland and other open forest habitats, it is mostly sedentary, though some populations may be migratory. The species, which is closely related to becards and tityras, was thought to be either a tyrant-flycatcher or cotinga, before it was placed in Tityridae.
The bird is 12.5 to 13 cm (4.9–5.1 in) in length, with whitish undersides, a black crown, and grey-brown upperparts. The sexes are similar in appearance, though the females have duller upperparts. It feeds on insects in the foliage of trees and bushes, and sometimes on the ground. Nesting occurs in a simple cup nest placed in the fork of a tree. Both parents incubate the eggs and help feed the chicks. When the chicks fledge, the parents may divide up the brood to continue helping. The species is not common and little is known about it, but it is not considered in danger of extinction, and has been classified as of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
## Taxonomy and systematics
The white-naped xenopsaris was described in 1869 by the German-Argentine scientist Hermann Burmeister, based on a specimen collected near Buenos Aires. Burmeister originally placed it in the becard genus, Pachyramphus. It was moved to the monotypic genus Xenopsaris by Robert Ridgway in 1891, but was still known to be closely related to Pachyramphus. A 1989 study of anatomy identified Pachyramphus as a sister taxon to Xenopsaris, but the white-naped xenopsaris was kept in its own genus due to several morphological and behavioural differences, namely its smaller size, the shape of its legs, the length of its primary flight feathers, the lack of strong sexual dimorphism (differences between the sexes) and the construction of the nest.
Which family the species belonged to remained unresolved for over a century. According to the Handbook of the Birds of the World, Xenopsaris and its allies were "taxonomically problematic genera that have for more than a hundred years been shifted back and forth between the cotingas (Cotingidae) and the Tyrannidae". When placed with the tyrant-flycatchers, Tyrannidae, it was considered closely related to the genera Suiriri, Serpophaga and Knipolegus. The uncertainty was not confined to this species, as there was a general confusion about where to draw the lines between the cotingas, tyrant-flycatchers and manakins.
Resolution was provided by the same 1989 study that confirmed the link between Xenopsaris and Pachyramphus. In it, Xenopsaris and six other genera previously held in the three families were found to actually form a fourth family, later named Tityridae. This new family is where the genus is now placed by the South American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society. A 2007 study of mitochondrial DNA confirmed the white-naped xenopsaris' place in the Tityridae, and its close relationship to Pachyramphus, as well as the genus Tityra. These three genera were found to be more distantly related to a fourth genus Iodopleura (the purpletufts), although further studies are needed to understand the complete relationship between these four genera.
The genus name Xenopsaris was derived from the Ancient Greek word xeno, meaning "stranger", and Psaris, a synonym for Tiyra, based on the Ancient Greek for starling, described by Georges Cuvier in 1817. The specific name albinucha is from Latin and refers to the bird's white (albus) nape (nuchus). The species is also known as the reed becard, white-naped becard and simply xenopsaris.
There are two subspecies of white-naped xenopsaris; the widespread nominate subspecies, and the more restricted X. a. minor of Venezuela, which was described by Carl Eduard Hellmayr in 1920.
## Description
The white-naped xenopsaris is smaller than the closely related becards and tityras, measuring 12.5 to 13 cm (4.9–5.1 in) in length and weighing around 10 g (0.35 oz). The subspecies X. a. minor has the same plumage as the nominate subspecies, but is smaller; the wing-chord (measurement from the wrist-joint to the end of the wing) length of the nominate subspecies, for example, is 6.4 to 6.6 cm (2.5–2.6 in) compared to 6.0 to 6.2 cm (2.4–2.4 in) in X. a. minor.
The face, lores, throat, breast, belly and rump of this species are white; the undersides are tinged with grey on the chest and yellow on the belly. The crown is glossy black in males. The nape is pale grey with a grey-white to white band separating the crown from the back. The wings are dusky greyish brown with white edging on the inner remiges and wing-coverts. The tail is dusky brown, and the stout bill, iris and legs are black. The female is similar to the male, but is duller overall and has a chestnut-tinged crown. Juvenile birds resemble adults but have greyish napes and more chestnut in the crown, and the feathers of the back, rump and primaries are scalloped with ochre. The secondaries on the wing and the tail feathers are edged with white.
The song of this species is delicate, and does not carry far. It is most commonly heard during the rainy season, but can be heard at any time of the day. The call is described as a thin, high-pitched and hesitant "teep, tre'e'e'e'e'a eea wu'u'u'e'e'e-e-e-e-e-p" or a "twip, tsiweeé, tseee, ti-ti-ti-ti", according to the Handbook of the Birds of the World. The initial trill is described as rising and then falling, and the last trill is described as long. Birds may sometimes vary the pattern and only use part of the song. The species is also described as making a squeaky and undulating screech, and males are described as whistling on the nest. Foraging males have been observed making an ascending "shreee" every few seconds while hunting for insects.
The white-naped xenopsaris looks somewhat similar to the cinereous becard, which overlaps its range in Venezuela. The white-naped xenopsaris is smaller, with a longer tail, thinner bill, whiter underparts (instead of grey) and browner upperparts (rather than greyish) .
## Distribution and habitat
The white-naped xenopsaris has a disjunct distribution. The southern population of the nominate subspecies is widespread from north-eastern Brazil through to Bolivia, Paraguay and northern Argentina and Uruguay. A separate population of the nominate is found in Guyana. The subspecies X. a. minor is found in west and central Venezuela, and probably extends into north-eastern Colombia.
The species is generally resident across its range, but sightings of solitary and silent birds have suggested that the species may be migratory in Bolivia and Brazil. A study published in 2005 suggested it was migratory in Santa Fe, Argentina, as the species was not observed in the area between March and September (the austral winter). In 2006 the species was reported for the first time in Peru, but it was unclear if this represented a vagrant escaping cold weather or a migrant, as the species is mostly uncommon across its range and that area is poorly studied ornithologically.
They occupy a variety of habitats across their range, including Caatinga scrubland, riparian (river) woodland, lightly wooded areas, the borders of open gallery forest and open areas with scattered trees. They usually live near water or damp areas, and range from sea-level to 550 m (1,800 ft).
## Behaviour
### Diet and feeding
The white-naped xenopsaris feeds on insects, but no studies have yet been done on the diet of adults. Chicks in the nest are fed grasshoppers from the family Acrididae, mantidflies, praying mantises and mosquitoes. Adults typically hunt singly or sometimes in pairs, and breeding pairs can often be observed hunting well apart from each other. They are shy, generally quiet and inconspicuous. They typically hunt from a perch on the outer edge of the foliage of trees, watching for prey and then launching themselves 0.5 to 1.5 m (1.6–4.9 ft) to snatch prey off leaves. They also strike from a hovering position above foliage, and may chase prey acrobatically for some distance. They often feed near the ground and sometimes take prey from the ground as well as from vegetation.
### Breeding
The species is territorial, with the males defending the territory. Nesting timing varies by location; in Venezuela it is reported to occur during the rainy season (June to September), and in Argentina during the austral summer (October to January). The nests are cup-shaped, 4.5 cm (1.8 in) across, 4 cm (1.6 in) high and 1.8 cm (0.71 in) deep. Nests have been recorded being constructed from fine dry grass, or woven plant fibre and a few rootlets. Nests are placed in the forks of branches 4 to 15 m (13–49 ft) up in trees 15 to 20 m (49–66 ft) tall. The clutch size is three eggs, which are greenish with brown spots. Both sexes incubate the eggs during the 14–15 day brooding period. The species has been described as very tame during this interval – staying on the nest even as researchers came within a few centimetres of the bird – but were very aggressive in attacking birds, like guira cuckoos, or other animals that came near the nest. The hatchlings are dark-skinned with grey down and pink mouths. Pink mouths in chicks are very unusual in suboscines.
Chicks hatch within 24 hours of each other. Six days after hatching, the chicks' eyes have opened and after eight days they are covered in whitish down. Chicks defecate outside of the nest by raising their tail to the side of the nest, so nests with older chicks are surrounded by faecal matter. Both parents feed and brood the chicks, taking it in turns. When one parent returns with food, it takes over brooding duties while the other leaves to hunt.
The chicks are fed by the parents for several days after fledging. The family may travel as a group or the parents may divide the brood, taking one or two chicks each.
## Conservation status
Across its range, the white-naped xenopsaris is uncommon and patchily distributed. It has not been evaluated as threatened by the IUCN Red List, as it does not meet any of the criteria. The population is evaluated as being stable, as there is no evidence of any decline or extreme fluctuations. It also occupies an enormous range, estimated to be 11 million km<sup>2</sup> (4.2 million sq mi). For these reasons, it is evaluated as a species of least concern.
|
35,282,598 |
Roger Norreis
| 1,143,556,081 |
13th-century Anglo-Norman abbot
|
[
"1220s deaths",
"12th-century births",
"Abbots of Evesham",
"Anglo-Normans",
"Priors of Canterbury"
] |
Roger Norreis (died between 1223 and 1225) was Abbot of Evesham in England. He was a controversial figure, installed in several offices against opposition. In his appointment to Evesham, he was accused of immoral behaviour and failing to follow monastic rules. In 1202, Norreis became embroiled in a dispute with his monks and his episcopal superior the Bishop of Worcester; litigation and argumentation lasted until his deposition in 1213. He was then appointed prior of a subsidiary monastic house of Evesham, but was deposed within months, then re-appointed to the office five years later.
Norreis has been described by modern historians as being unsuited for the religious positions to which he was appointed and by one of being completely unsuitable to hold any kind of spiritual role. Nevertheless, even his most severe contemporary critic, Thomas of Marlborough, one of his own monks at Evesham, conceded that Norreis was energetic, entertaining, and enterprising; during his time as abbot of Evesham Abbey he managed to complete the crossing tower of the monastic church.
Roger Norreis died between 1223 and 1225.
## Background and early career
Norreis was a native of northern England and his family was probably of Norse origin. He was a monk at Christ Church Priory, the cathedral chapter of Canterbury Cathedral; when he became a monk is unknown. In 1187, he was appointed treasurer of the priory, and in that role was sent by the cathedral chapter to King Henry II of England to plead their case against Baldwin of Forde, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop and his monks were in dispute over Baldwin's plan to found a collegiate church at Hackington in honour of Thomas Becket which most of the monks opposed because they feared it would diminish the prestige of their priory.
Once Norreis reached the king he was converted to Baldwin's side, perhaps because of the latter's appointment of Norreis as the cellarer of Christ Church while the pair were at the king's court. The monks resisted this appointment, and in September they appealed to the papacy, arguing that the appointment was against the Benedictine Rule. They also captured and held Norreis in custody, telling anyone who enquired after him that he was sick. Norreis escaped in early 1188 by travelling through the sewer and fled to the safety of the archbishop, who was then at Otford. In a mocking reference to his escape route, Norreis was occasionally known as Roger Cloacarius or "Roger the Drain-Cleaner". Baldwin then tried to have Norreis installed as prior at Christ Church's dependent priory of St Martin's, Dover, but the appointment was never confirmed.
## Prior and abbot
King Henry died on 6 July 1189 and his son Richard I was crowned on 3 September. The succession of a new monarch eventually allowed a truce in the dispute between the Canterbury monks and their archbishop, as Henry had been a supporter of the archbishop's scheme. Before the truce could be hammered out, Baldwin appointed Norreis as prior of Christ Church in October 1189 as another move in the quarrel over the Hackington project. In November, the cathedral chapter secured a compromise that included the abandonment of the scheme and Norreis's dismissal from office. The agreement came at a council held by Richard in late November 1189 at which the monks agreed to let the king settle the dispute over the Hackington project if the archbishop would withdraw Norreis's appointment. Norreis's fellow monks considered him a traitor to their cause, and his reputation was that of someone with few morals. He was also known for ingratiating himself with those in power, including the justiciar Geoffrey fitzPeter. Many of the details concerning Norreis's career at Christ Church come from the works of Gervase of Canterbury, as well as the collection of letters known as the Epistolae Cantuarienses.
Norreis was appointed to the abbacy of Evesham Abbey in 1190 and was blessed as abbot on 13 January 1190. He owed his appointment to King Richard and to Baldwin's attempts to make the dismissal from Christ Church look less like a defeat for the archbishop. Norreis also claimed that he received the office in return for unspecified services he rendered to Richard. There was no attempt at an election by the monks, a lack which went against canon law. During his tenure of office, his monks accused him of fornication, excessive drinking, gluttony, setting up favourites, starving the monks, and appropriating monastic property for his own use. A further offence was his habit of wearing secular clothing rather than the monastic habit prescribed by the Benedictine Rule. All these charges come from one of his monks, the historian Thomas of Marlborough, who wrote much of the history of Evesham known as the Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham. Thomas's account of Norreis's rule is biased against the abbot and is a self-aggrandising account of how Thomas single-handedly triumphed over both his and his abbey's foes. Norreis did manage some good for the abbey, as it was while he was abbot that the crossing tower of the monastic church was completed.
Early in his tenure Norreis appears to have been somewhat circumspect and did not greatly annoy his monks. The change appears to have happened around 1195, when the monks are first recorded as appealing to higher authority. Because Evesham had traditionally claimed to be exempt from episcopal oversight by the see of Worcester, in which it was located, the monks could only appeal to the papacy or to a papal legate. Hubert Walter, the Archbishop of Canterbury after Baldwin, held a legateship for England until July 1195 and so the monks appealed to him. Walter forced Norreis to make some compromises with his subordinates, but the truce did not last long, and the monks once again complained of their treatment. They were visited by the new Bishop of Worcester John of Coutances some time between 1196 and 1198, but Norreis succeeded in avoiding any severe sanctions by offering gifts to the bishop. The monks again appealed to Walter in about 1200, but between the archbishop's preoccupation with political affairs and Norreis's promises to reform, no solid changes occurred.
## Dispute with Mauger and his monks
In 1202, the new Bishop of Worcester Mauger attempted to investigate Norreis's conduct, but under the leadership of Thomas of Marlborough the monastic community refused to allow the bishop to visit, claiming that Evesham was exempt from episcopal visitation and oversight. According to Thomas, Norreis offered to renounce the abbey's claim to exemption in return for money, but the bishop refused. Norreis then fled the monastery, while the monks continued to refuse the bishop and were excommunicated, a sentence that Norreis was spared. Between early September and mid-October the dispute was heard by three ecclesiastical tribunals; Mauger was supported by Eustace, Bishop of Ely, and Giles de Braose, Bishop of Hereford. The monks and Norreis then made common cause, each vowing to stand by the other in resisting Mauger. As well as these two cases, there was a dispute between the monks and the bishop over the ownership of some properties. The monks and Norreis then obtained the right for their case to be heard by papal judge-delegates, but Mauger objected to the fact that the appointed judges were all Benedictine monks, and travelled to Rome to appeal.
In 1203, Norreis, secure in his alliance with his own monks, once again began to exploit the monastery for his own profit and that of his family and friends. His monks became upset at this renewal of their exploitation and sent Thomas, along with other monks, to appropriate the harvest from some lands that had been given by Norreis to a non-member of the community. Norreis protested to King John and to Hubert Walter. Both the king and Walter summoned Thomas to appear before them separately and explain the actions of the monks. Thomas failed to persuade either man and nothing was done about Norreis's exactions and abuse of his monks.
Norreis went to Rome in the company of Thomas of Marlborough shortly before 1205 to lay the abbey's case before the papacy. Thomas remained in Italy, but Norreis returned to England in the middle of 1205. While in Rome, Norreis and Thomas borrowed 400 marks to finance the litigation at the papal curia. Norreis could not repay this sum and for a while was in danger of being imprisoned, but he managed to leave Rome without suffering the fate of one of his companions who was detained for the debt and died while imprisoned. When Norreis made it back to England, Mauger excommunicated the abbot in April 1205. The monks won a victory on the question of the abbey's exemption from episcopal visitation in 1206, but other elements of the quarrel remained unresolved, including that of the disputed churches. Later that year the monks became so annoyed by Norreis's abuse that they abandoned the abbey and did not return until they secured the abbot's confirmation of their rights.
With the question of the episcopal exemption decided in Evesham's favour, the alliance between Norreis and his monks dissolved. The monks again complained of their abbot's behaviour to the new papal legate, John of Sancta Maria. The legate ordered an investigation, the result being a written agreement between the two parties. Norreis gave gifts to the legate's nephew, refused to sign the agreement, and took revenge on his opponents by expelling Thomas of Marlborough and his allies from the monastery. Thirty monks followed Thomas into exile, and Norreis pursued them with soldiers who were defeated by the monks. A compromise was eventually reached, Norreis agreeing that the revenues of the abbey would be split with the monks, that officials of the abbey would be appointed by the abbot but with the advice and consent of the monks, and that the abbot would not admit or expel monks without taking the counsel of his monks nor dispose of the monastic property without the consent of his subordinates. Although the issue of the monks' support was temporarily solved, the issue of the disputed properties between Mauger and the monastery continued. Norreis appears to have been willing to compromise with the bishop, but the monks refused.
The dispute between Norreis and his monks dragged on for years. The interdict of 1207–1213 caused further delays, but when it was lifted in 1213 the case against Norreis was finally heard. A papal legate visited the abbey and found that the monks were lacking in food, clothes, and other necessities. The liturgy was not being performed according to the monastic rule because the monks lacked the proper clothing. Charity to the poor had ceased, the monastic buildings were dilapidated, and the monks were forced to beg for their needs. The legate found that the abbot was living well, wearing non-monastic clothes, and enjoying the company of young women in his dwelling, while his monks suffered. Norreis was deposed from the abbacy by the papal legate in 1213.
## Later life and death
On 27 November 1213, Norreis was appointed the prior of Penwortham Priory, a dependent priory of Evesham, partly to compensate him for the loss of the abbacy and partly to keep him from abandoning monastic life entirely. Norreis was deposed five months later owing to his continued bad morals and behaviour and again went to Rome in a bid to be restored to office. On this occasion, he was unable to secure his reinstatement, but in 1218 or 1219, he was restored to Penwortham through the influence of the papal legate Pandulf Verraccio. Norreis died on 16 July or 19 July, but there is disagreement over the year of his death. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography states that he died in 1223, but the editors of Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, 940–1216 state he died in either 1224 or 1225. He was buried at Penwortham.
Thomas of Marlborough, who knew Norreis, wrote that he was "everywhere condemned as the manifest enemy of God". More modern writers echo the sentiment. John Moorman described Norreis as a man "totally unsuited to the delicate and responsible task of ruling over a company of men and directing the affairs of a wealthy corporation". David Knowles, a historian of English monasticism, wrote that Norreis was "utterly unworthy to hold spiritual office of any kind", and that Baldwin's appointment of him as prior at Christ Church "must always remain a dark stain on the archbishop's reputation". Knowles also noted that he was "a man of great practical ability". Even Thomas of Marlborough noted that Norreis was energetic, entertaining, and full of enterprise.
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19,318 |
Marilyn Monroe
| 1,172,632,313 |
American actress, model, and singer (1926–1962)
|
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Marilyn Monroe (/ˈmærəlɪn mənˈroʊ/; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1, 1926 – August 4, 1962) was an American actress, model, and singer. Known for playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed \$200 million (equivalent to \$ billion in ) by the time of her death in 1962. Long after her death, Monroe remains a pop culture icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her as the sixth-greatest female screen legend from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in a total of 12 foster homes and an orphanage before marrying James Dougherty at age sixteen. She was working in a factory during World War II when she met a photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit and began a successful pin-up modeling career, which led to short-lived film contracts with 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures. After a series of minor film roles, she signed a new contract with Fox in late 1950. Over the next two years, she became a popular actress with roles in several comedies, including As Young as You Feel and Monkey Business, and in the dramas Clash by Night and Don't Bother to Knock. Monroe faced a scandal when it was revealed that she had posed for nude photographs prior to becoming a star, but the story did not damage her career and instead resulted in increased interest in her films.
By 1953, Monroe was one of the most marketable Hollywood stars. She had leading roles in the film noir Niagara, which overtly relied on her sex appeal, and the comedies Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, which established her star image as a "dumb blonde". The same year, her nude images were used as the centerfold and cover of the first issue of Playboy magazine. Monroe played a significant role in the creation and management of her public image throughout her career, but felt disappointed when typecast and underpaid by the studio. She was briefly suspended in early 1954 for refusing a film project but returned to star in The Seven Year Itch (1955), one of the biggest box office successes of her career.
When the studio was still reluctant to change Monroe's contract, she founded her own film production company in 1954. She dedicated 1955 to building the company and began studying method acting under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Later that year, Fox awarded her a new contract, which gave her more control and a larger salary. Her subsequent roles included a critically acclaimed performance in Bus Stop (1956) and her first independent production in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957). She won a Golden Globe for Best Actress for her role in Some Like It Hot (1959), a critical and commercial success. Her last completed film was the drama The Misfits (1961).
Monroe's troubled private life received much attention. She struggled with addiction and mood disorders. Her marriages to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and to playwright Arthur Miller were highly publicized, but ended in divorce. On August 4, 1962, she died at age 36 from an overdose of barbiturates at her Los Angeles home. Her death was ruled a probable suicide.
## Life and career
### 1926–1943: Childhood and first marriage
Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, at the Los Angeles General Hospital in Los Angeles, California. Her mother, Gladys Pearl Baker (née Monroe; 1902–1984), was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico to a poor Midwestern family who migrated to California at the turn of the century. At age 15, Gladys had married John Newton Baker, an abusive man nine years her senior. They had two children together, Robert (1918–1933) and Berniece (1919–2014). She successfully filed for divorce and sole custody of her two oldest in 1923, but Baker kidnapped the children soon after and moved with them to his native Kentucky.
Monroe was not told that she had a sister until she was 12, and they met for the first time in 1944 when Monroe was 17 or 18. Following the divorce, Gladys worked as a film negative cutter at Consolidated Film Industries. Her second marriage occurred in 1924 when she married Martin Edward Mortensen, but they separated just months later and divorced in 1928. In 2022, DNA testing indicated that Monroe's father was Charles Stanley Gifford (1898–1965), a co-worker of Gladys, with whom she had an affair in 1925. Monroe also had two other half-siblings from Gifford's marriage with his first wife, a sister, Doris Elizabeth (1920–1933), and a brother, Charles Stanley (1922–2015).
Although Gladys was mentally and financially unprepared for a child, Monroe's early childhood was stable and happy. Gladys placed her daughter with evangelical Christian foster parents Albert and Ida Bolender in the rural town of Hawthorne. She also lived there for six months, until she was forced to move back to the city for employment. She then began visiting her daughter on weekends. In the summer of 1933, Gladys bought a small house in Hollywood with a loan from the Home Owners' Loan Corporation and moved seven-year-old Monroe in with her. They shared the house with lodgers, actors George and Maude Atkinson and their daughter, Nellie. In January 1934, Gladys had a mental breakdown and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. After several months in a rest home, she was committed to the Metropolitan State Hospital. She spent the rest of her life in and out of hospitals and was rarely in contact with Monroe. Monroe became a ward of the state, and her mother's friend Grace Goddard took responsibility over her and her mother's affairs.
Over the next four years, Monroe's living situation changed often. For the first 16 months, she continued living with the Atkinsons, and may have been sexually abused during this time. Always a shy girl, she now also developed a stutter and became withdrawn. In the summer of 1935, she briefly stayed with Grace and her husband Erwin "Doc" Goddard and two other families. In September 1935, Grace placed her in the Los Angeles Orphans Home. The orphanage was "a model institution" and was described in positive terms by her peers, but Monroe felt abandoned. Encouraged by the orphanage staff, who thought that Monroe would be happier living in a family, Grace became her legal guardian in 1936, but did not take her out of the orphanage until the summer of 1937. Monroe's second stay with the Goddards lasted only a few months because Doc molested her. She then lived for brief periods with her relatives and Grace's friends and relatives in Los Angeles and Compton.
Monroe's childhood experiences first made her want to become an actress: "I didn't like the world around me because it was kind of grim ... When I heard that this was acting, I said that's what I want to be ... Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I'd sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it."
Monroe found a more permanent home in September 1938, when she began living with Grace's aunt Ana Lower in the west-side district of Sawtelle. She was enrolled at Emerson Junior High School and went to weekly Christian Science services with Lower. She excelled in writing and contributed to the school newspaper, but was otherwise a mediocre student. Owing to the elderly Lower's health problems, Monroe returned to live with the Goddards in Van Nuys in about early 1941.
The same year, she began attending Van Nuys High School. In 1942, the company that employed Doc Goddard relocated him to West Virginia. California child protection laws prevented the Goddards from taking Monroe out of state, and she faced having to return to the orphanage. As a solution, she married their neighbors' 21-year-old son, factory worker James Dougherty, on June 19, 1942, just after her 16th birthday. Monroe subsequently dropped out of high school and became a housewife. She found herself and Dougherty mismatched, and later said she was "dying of boredom" during the marriage. In 1943, Dougherty enlisted in the Merchant Marine and was stationed on Santa Catalina Island, where Monroe moved with him.
### 1944–1948: Modeling and first film roles
In April 1944, Dougherty was shipped out to the Pacific, where he remained for most of the next two years. Monroe moved in with her in-laws and began a job at the Radioplane Company, a munitions factory in Van Nuys. In late 1944, she met photographer David Conover, who had been sent by the U.S. Army Air Forces' First Motion Picture Unit to the factory to shoot morale-boosting pictures of female workers. Although none of her pictures were used, she quit working at the factory in January 1945 and began modeling for Conover and his friends. Defying her deployed husband, she moved on her own and signed a contract with the Blue Book Model Agency in August 1945.
The agency deemed Monroe's figure more suitable for pin-up than high fashion modeling, and she was featured mostly in advertisements and men's magazines. To make herself more employable, she straightened her hair and dyed it blonde. According to Emmeline Snively, the agency's owner, Monroe quickly became one of its most ambitious and hard-working models; by early 1946, she had appeared on 33 magazine covers for publications such as Pageant, U.S. Camera, Laff, and Peek. As a model, Monroe occasionally used the pseudonym Jean Norman.
Through Snively, Monroe signed a contract with an acting agency in June 1946. After an unsuccessful interview at Paramount Pictures, she was given a screen-test by Ben Lyon, a 20th Century-Fox executive. Head executive Darryl F. Zanuck was unenthusiastic about it, but he gave her a standard six-month contract to avoid her being signed by rival studio RKO Pictures. Monroe's contract began in August 1946, and she and Lyon selected the stage name "Marilyn Monroe". The first name was picked by Lyon, who was reminded of Broadway star Marilyn Miller; the surname was Monroe's mother's maiden name. In September 1946, she divorced Dougherty, who opposed her career.
Monroe spent her first six months at Fox learning acting, singing, and dancing, and observing the film-making process. Her contract was renewed in February 1947, and she was given her first film roles, bit parts in Dangerous Years (1947) and Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948). The studio also enrolled her in the Actors' Laboratory Theatre, an acting school teaching the techniques of the Group Theatre; she later stated that it was "my first taste of what real acting in a real drama could be, and I was hooked". Despite her enthusiasm, her teachers thought her too shy and insecure to have a future in acting, and Fox did not renew her contract in August 1947. She returned to modeling while also doing occasional odd jobs at film studios, such as working as a dancing "pacer" behind the scenes to keep the leads on point at musical sets.
Monroe was determined to make it as an actress, and continued studying at the Actors' Lab. She had a small role in the play Glamour Preferred at the Bliss-Hayden Theater, but it ended after a couple of performances. To network, she frequented producers' offices, befriended gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky, and entertained influential male guests at studio functions, a practice she had begun at Fox. She also became a friend and occasional sex partner of Fox executive Joseph M. Schenck, who persuaded his friend Harry Cohn, the head executive of Columbia Pictures, to sign her in March 1948.
At Columbia, Monroe's look was modeled after Rita Hayworth and her hair was bleached platinum blonde. She began working with the studio's head drama coach, Natasha Lytess, who would remain her mentor until 1955. Her only film at the studio was the low-budget musical Ladies of the Chorus (1948), in which she had her first starring role as a chorus girl courted by a wealthy man. She also screen-tested for the lead role in Born Yesterday (1950), but her contract was not renewed in September 1948. Ladies of the Chorus was released the following month and was not a success.
### 1949–1952: Breakthrough years
When her contract at Columbia ended, Monroe returned again to modeling. She shot a commercial for Pabst beer and posed for artistic nude photographs by Tom Kelley for John Baumgarth calendars, using the name 'Mona Monroe'. Monroe had previously posed topless or clad in a bikini for other artists including Earl Moran, and felt comfortable with nudity. Shortly after leaving Columbia, she also met and became the protégée and mistress of Johnny Hyde, the vice president of the William Morris Agency.
Through Hyde, Monroe landed small roles in several films, including two critically acclaimed works: Joseph Mankiewicz's drama All About Eve (1950) and John Huston's film noir The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Despite her screen time being only a few minutes in the latter, she gained a mention in Photoplay and according to biographer Donald Spoto "moved effectively from movie model to serious actress". In December 1950, Hyde negotiated a seven-year contract for Monroe with 20th Century-Fox. According to its terms, Fox could opt to not renew the contract after each year. Hyde died of a heart attack only days later, which left Monroe devastated. In 1951, Monroe had supporting roles in three moderately successful Fox comedies: As Young as You Feel, Love Nest, and Let's Make It Legal. According to Spoto all three films featured her "essentially [as] a sexy ornament", but she received some praise from critics: Bosley Crowther of The New York Times described her as "superb" in As Young As You Feel and Ezra Goodman of the Los Angeles Daily News called her "one of the brightest up-and-coming [actresses]" for Love Nest.
Her popularity with audiences was also growing: she received several thousand fan letters a week, and was declared "Miss Cheesecake of 1951" by the army newspaper Stars and Stripes, reflecting the preferences of soldiers in the Korean War. In February 1952, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association named Monroe the "best young box office personality". In her private life, Monroe had a short relationship with director Elia Kazan and also briefly dated several other men, including director Nicholas Ray and actors Yul Brynner and Peter Lawford. In early 1952, she began a highly publicized romance with retired New York Yankees baseball star Joe DiMaggio, one of the most famous sports personalities of the era.
Monroe found herself at the center of a scandal in March 1952, when she revealed publicly that she had posed for a nude calendar in 1949. The studio had learned about the photos and that she was publicly rumored to be the model some weeks prior, and together with Monroe decided that to prevent damaging her career it was best to admit to them while stressing that she had been broke at the time. The strategy gained her public sympathy and increased interest in her films, for which she was now receiving top billing. In the wake of the scandal, Monroe was featured on the cover of Life magazine as the "Talk of Hollywood", and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper declared her the "cheesecake queen" turned "box office smash". Three of Monroe's films —Clash by Night, Don't Bother to Knock and We're Not Married!— were released soon after to capitalize on the public interest.
Despite her newfound popularity as a sex symbol, Monroe also wished to showcase more of her acting range. She had begun taking acting classes with Michael Chekhov and mime Lotte Goslar soon after beginning the Fox contract, and Clash by Night and Don't Bother to Knock showed her in different roles. In the former, a drama starring Barbara Stanwyck and directed by Fritz Lang, she played a fish cannery worker; to prepare, she spent time in a fish cannery in Monterey. She received positive reviews for her performance: The Hollywood Reporter stated that "she deserves starring status with her excellent interpretation", and Variety wrote that she "has an ease of delivery which makes her a cinch for popularity". The latter was a thriller in which Monroe starred as a mentally disturbed babysitter and which Zanuck used to test her abilities in a heavier dramatic role. It received mixed reviews from critics, with Crowther deeming her too inexperienced for the difficult role, and Variety blaming the script for the film's problems.
Monroe's three other films in 1952 continued with her typecasting in comedic roles that highlighted her sex appeal. In We're Not Married!, her role as a beauty pageant contestant was created solely to "present Marilyn in two bathing suits", according to its writer Nunnally Johnson. In Howard Hawks's Monkey Business, in which she acted opposite Cary Grant, she played a secretary who is a "dumb, childish blonde, innocently unaware of the havoc her sexiness causes around her". In O. Henry's Full House, with Charles Laughton she appeared in a passing vignette as a nineteenth-century street walker. Monroe added to her reputation as a new sex symbol with publicity stunts that year: she wore a revealing dress when acting as Grand Marshal at the Miss America Pageant parade, and told gossip columnist Earl Wilson that she usually wore no underwear. By the end of the year, gossip columnist Florabel Muir named Monroe the "it girl" of 1952.
During this period, Monroe gained a reputation for being difficult to work with, which would worsen as her career progressed. She was often late or did not show up at all, did not remember her lines, and would demand several re-takes before she was satisfied with her performance. Her dependence on her acting coaches—Natasha Lytess and then Paula Strasberg—also irritated directors. Monroe's problems have been attributed to a combination of perfectionism, low self-esteem, and stage fright. She disliked her lack of control on film sets and never experienced similar problems during photo shoots, in which she had more say over her performance and could be more spontaneous instead of following a script. To alleviate her anxiety and chronic insomnia, she began to use barbiturates, amphetamines, and alcohol, which also exacerbated her problems, although she did not become severely addicted until 1956. According to Sarah Churchwell, some of Monroe's behavior, especially later in her career, was also in response to the condescension and sexism of her male co-stars and directors. Biographer Lois Banner said that she was bullied by many of her directors.
### 1953: Rising star
Monroe starred in three movies that were released in 1953 and emerged as a major sex symbol and one of Hollywood's most bankable performers. The first was the Technicolor film noir Niagara, in which she played a femme fatale scheming to murder her husband, played by Joseph Cotten. By then, Monroe and her make-up artist Allan "Whitey" Snyder had developed her "trademark" make-up look: dark arched brows, pale skin, "glistening" red lips and a beauty mark. According to Sarah Churchwell, Niagara was one of the most overtly sexual films of Monroe's career. In some scenes, Monroe's body was covered only by a sheet or a towel, considered shocking by contemporary audiences. Niagaras most famous scene is a 30-second long shot behind Monroe where she is seen walking with her hips swaying, which was used heavily in the film's marketing.
When Niagara was released in January 1953, women's clubs protested it as immoral, but it proved popular with audiences. While Variety deemed it "clichéd" and "morbid", The New York Times commented that "the falls and Miss Monroe are something to see", as although Monroe may not be "the perfect actress at this point ... she can be seductive—even when she walks". Monroe continued to attract attention by wearing revealing outfits, most famously at the Photoplay Awards in January 1953, where she won the "Fastest Rising Star" award. A pleated "sunburst" waist-tight, deep decolleté gold lamé dress designed by William Travilla for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but barely seen at all in the film, was to become a sensation. Prompted by such imagery, veteran star Joan Crawford publicly called the behavior "unbecoming an actress and a lady".
While Niagara made Monroe a sex symbol and established her "look", her second film of 1953, the satirical musical comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, cemented her screen persona as a "dumb blonde". Based on Anita Loos' novel and its Broadway version, the film focuses on two "gold-digging" showgirls played by Monroe and Jane Russell. Monroe's role was originally intended for Betty Grable, who had been 20th Century-Fox's most popular "blonde bombshell" in the 1940s; Monroe was fast eclipsing her as a star who could appeal to both male and female audiences. As part of the film's publicity campaign, she and Russell pressed their hand and footprints in wet concrete outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in June. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was released shortly after and became one of the biggest box office successes of the year. Crowther of The New York Times and William Brogdon of Variety both commented favorably on Monroe, especially noting her performance of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend"; according to the latter, she demonstrated the "ability to sex a song as well as point up the eye values of a scene by her presence".
In September, Monroe made her television debut in the Jack Benny Show, playing Jack's fantasy woman in the episode "Honolulu Trip". She co-starred with Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall in her third movie of the year, How to Marry a Millionaire, released in November. It featured Monroe as a naïve model who teams up with her friends to find rich husbands, repeating the successful formula of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It was the second film ever released in CinemaScope, a widescreen format that Fox hoped would draw audiences back to theaters as television was beginning to cause losses to film studios. Despite mixed reviews, the film was Monroe's biggest box office success at that point in her career.
Monroe was listed in the annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll in both 1953 and 1954, and according to Fox historian Aubrey Solomon became the studio's "greatest asset" alongside CinemaScope. Monroe's position as a leading sex symbol was confirmed in December 1953, when Hugh Hefner featured her on the cover and as centerfold in the first issue of Playboy; Monroe did not consent to the publication. The cover image was a photograph taken of her at the Miss America Pageant parade in 1952, and the centerfold featured one of her 1949 nude photographs.
### 1954–1955: Conflicts with 20th Century-Fox and marriage to Joe DiMaggio
Monroe had become one of 20th Century-Fox's biggest stars, but her contract had not changed since 1950, so that she was paid far less than other stars of her stature and could not choose her projects. Her attempts to appear in films that would not focus on her as a pin-up had been thwarted by the studio head executive, Darryl F. Zanuck, who had a strong personal dislike of her and did not think she would earn the studio as much revenue in other types of roles. Under pressure from the studio's owner, Spyros Skouras, Zanuck had also decided that Fox should focus exclusively on entertainment to maximize profits and canceled the production of any "serious films". In January 1954, he suspended Monroe when she refused to begin shooting yet another musical comedy, The Girl in Pink Tights.
This was front-page news, and Monroe immediately took action to counter negative publicity. On January 14, she and Joe DiMaggio were married at the San Francisco City Hall. They then traveled by car first to Paso Robles, then south to nearby San Luis Obispo the day after, before spending their honeymoon outside Idyllwild, California, in the mountain lodge of Monroe's lawyer Lloyd Wright. On January 29, 1954, fifteen days later, they flew to Japan, combining a "honeymoon" with his commitment to his former San Francisco Seals coach Lefty O'Doul, to help train Japanese baseball teams. From Tokyo, she traveled with Jean O'Doul, Lefty's wife, to Korea, where she participated in a USO show, singing songs from her films for over 60,000 U.S. Marines over a four-day period. After returning to the U.S., she was awarded Photoplay's "Most Popular Female Star" prize. Monroe settled with Fox in March, with the promise of a new contract, a bonus of \$100,000, and a starring role in the film adaptation of the Broadway success The Seven Year Itch.
In April 1954, Otto Preminger's western River of No Return, the last film that Monroe had filmed prior to the suspension, was released. She called it a "Z-grade cowboy movie in which the acting finished second to the scenery and the CinemaScope process", but it was popular with audiences. The first film she made after the suspension was the musical There's No Business Like Show Business, which she strongly disliked but the studio required her to do for dropping The Girl in Pink Tights. It was unsuccessful upon its release in late 1954, with Monroe's performance considered vulgar by many critics.
In September 1954, Monroe began filming Billy Wilder's comedy The Seven Year Itch, starring opposite Tom Ewell as a woman who becomes the object of her married neighbor's sexual fantasies. Although the film was shot in Hollywood, the studio decided to generate advance publicity by staging the filming of a scene in which Monroe is standing on a subway grate with the air blowing up the skirt of her white dress on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The shoot lasted for several hours and attracted nearly 2,000 spectators. The "subway grate scene" became one of Monroe's most famous, and The Seven Year Itch became one of the biggest commercial successes of the year after its release in June 1955.
The publicity stunt placed Monroe on international front pages, and it also marked the end of her marriage to DiMaggio, who was infuriated by it. The union had been troubled from the start by his jealousy and controlling attitude; he was also physically abusive. After returning from NYC to Hollywood in October 1954, Monroe filed for divorce, after only nine months of marriage.
After filming for The Seven Year Itch wrapped up in November 1954, Monroe left Hollywood for the East Coast, where she and photographer Milton Greene founded their own production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions (MMP)—an action that has later been called "instrumental" in the collapse of the studio system. Monroe stated that she was "tired of the same old sex roles" and asserted that she was no longer under contract to Fox, as it had not fulfilled its duties, such as paying her the promised bonus. This began a year-long legal battle between her and Fox in January 1955. The press largely ridiculed Monroe, and she was parodied in the Broadway play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955), in which her lookalike Jayne Mansfield played a dumb actress who starts her own production company.
After founding MMP, Monroe moved to Manhattan and spent 1955 studying acting. She took classes with Constance Collier and attended workshops on method acting at the Actors Studio, run by Lee Strasberg. She grew close to Strasberg and his wife Paula, receiving private lessons at their home due to her shyness, and soon became a family member. She replaced her old acting coach, Natasha Lytess, with Paula; the Strasbergs remained an important influence for the rest of her career. Monroe also started undergoing psychoanalysis, as Strasberg believed that an actor must confront their emotional traumas and use them in their performances.
Monroe continued her relationship with DiMaggio despite the ongoing divorce process; she also dated actor Marlon Brando and playwright Arthur Miller. She had first been introduced to Miller by Elia Kazan in the early 1950s. The affair between Monroe and Miller became increasingly serious after October 1955, when her divorce was finalized and he separated from his wife. The studio urged her to end it, as Miller was being investigated by the FBI for allegations of communism and had been subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, but Monroe refused. The relationship led to the FBI opening a file on her.
By the end of the year, Monroe and Fox signed a new seven-year contract, as MMP would not be able to finance films alone, and the studio was eager to have Monroe working for them again. Fox would pay her \$400,000 to make four films, and granted her the right to choose her own projects, directors and cinematographers. She would also be free to make one film with MMP per each completed film for Fox.
### 1956–1959: Critical acclaim and marriage to Arthur Miller
Monroe began 1956 by announcing her win over 20th Century-Fox. She legally changed her name to Marilyn Monroe. The press wrote favorably about her decision to fight the studio; Time called her a "shrewd businesswoman" and Look predicted that the win would be "an example of the individual against the herd for years to come". In contrast, Monroe's relationship with Miller prompted some negative comments, such as Walter Winchell's statement that "America's best-known blonde moving picture star is now the darling of the left-wing intelligentsia."
In March, Monroe began filming the drama Bus Stop, her first film under the new contract. She played Chérie, a saloon singer whose dreams of stardom are complicated by a naïve cowboy who falls in love with her. For the role, she learned an Ozark accent, chose costumes and makeup that lacked the glamor of her earlier films, and provided deliberately mediocre singing and dancing. Broadway director Joshua Logan agreed to direct, despite initially doubting Monroe's acting abilities and knowing of her difficult reputation. The filming took place in Idaho and Arizona, with Monroe "technically in charge" as the head of MMP, occasionally making decisions on cinematography and with Logan adapting to her chronic lateness and perfectionism. The experience changed Logan's opinion of Monroe, and he later compared her to Charlie Chaplin in her ability to blend comedy and tragedy.
On June 29, 1956, Monroe and Miller were married at the Westchester County Court in White Plains, New York; two days later they had a Jewish ceremony at the home of Kay Brown, Miller's literary agent, in Waccabuc, New York. With the marriage, Monroe converted to Judaism, which led Egypt to ban all of her films. Due to Monroe's status as a sex symbol and Miller's image as an intellectual, the media saw the union as a mismatch, as evidenced by Variety's headline, "Egghead Weds Hourglass".
Bus Stop was released in August 1956 and became a critical and commercial success. The Saturday Review of Literature wrote that Monroe's performance "effectively dispels once and for all the notion that she is merely a glamour personality" and Crowther proclaimed: "Hold on to your chairs, everybody, and get set for a rattling surprise. Marilyn Monroe has finally proved herself an actress." She also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress for her performance.
In August, Monroe also began filming MMP's first independent production, The Prince and the Showgirl, at Pinewood Studios in England. Based on a 1953 stage play by Terence Rattigan, it was to be directed and co-produced by, and to co-star, Laurence Olivier. The production was complicated by conflicts between him and Monroe. Olivier, who had also directed and starred in the stage play, angered her with the patronizing statement "All you have to do is be sexy", and with his demand she replicate Vivien Leigh's stage interpretation of the character. He also disliked the constant presence of Paula Strasberg, Monroe's acting coach, on set. In retaliation, Monroe became uncooperative and began to deliberately arrive late, later saying, "if you don't respect your artists, they can't work well."
Monroe also experienced other problems during the production. Her dependence on pharmaceuticals escalated and, according to Spoto, she had a miscarriage. She and Greene also argued over how MMP should be run. Despite the difficulties, filming was completed on schedule by the end of 1956. The Prince and the Showgirl was released to mixed reviews in June 1957 and proved unpopular with American audiences. It was better received in Europe, where she was awarded the Italian David di Donatello and the French Crystal Star awards and nominated for a BAFTA.
After returning from England, Monroe took an 18-month hiatus to concentrate on family life. She and Miller split their time between NYC, Connecticut and Long Island. She had an ectopic pregnancy in mid-1957, and a miscarriage a year later; these problems were most likely linked to her endometriosis. Monroe was also briefly hospitalized due to a barbiturate overdose. As she and Greene could not settle their disagreements over MMP, Monroe bought his share of the company.
Monroe returned to Hollywood in July 1958 to act opposite Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Billy Wilder's comedy on gender roles, Some Like It Hot. She considered the role of Sugar Kane another "dumb blonde", but accepted it due to Miller's encouragement and the offer of 10% of the film's profits on top of her standard pay. The film's difficult production has since become "legendary". Monroe demanded dozens of retakes, and did not remember her lines or act as directed—Curtis famously said that kissing her was "like kissing Hitler" due to the number of retakes. Monroe privately likened the production to a sinking ship and commented on her co-stars and director saying "[but] why should I worry, I have no phallic symbol to lose." Many of the problems stemmed from her and Wilder—who also had a reputation for being difficult—disagreeing on how she should play the role. She angered him by asking to alter many of her scenes, which in turn made her stage fright worse, and it is suggested that she deliberately ruined several scenes to act them her way.
In the end, Wilder was happy with Monroe's performance, saying: "Anyone can remember lines, but it takes a real artist to come on the set and not know her lines and yet give the performance she did!" Some Like It Hot was a critical and commercial success when it was released in March 1959. Monroe's performance earned her a Golden Globe for Best Actress, and prompted Variety to call her "a comedienne with that combination of sex appeal and timing that just can't be beat". It has been voted one of the best films ever made in polls by the BBC, the American Film Institute, and Sight & Sound.
### 1960–1962: Career decline and personal difficulties
After Some Like It Hot, Monroe took another hiatus until late 1959, when she starred in the musical comedy Let's Make Love. She chose George Cukor to direct and Miller rewrote some of the script, which she considered weak. She accepted the part solely because she was behind on her contract with Fox. The film's production was delayed by her frequent absences from the set. During the shoot, Monroe had an affair with co-star Yves Montand that was widely reported by the press and used in the film's publicity campaign. Let's Make Love was unsuccessful upon its release in September 1960. Crowther described Monroe as appearing "rather untidy" and "lacking ... the old Monroe dynamism", and Hedda Hopper called the film "the most vulgar picture she's ever done". Truman Capote lobbied for Monroe to play Holly Golightly in a film adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's, but the role went to Audrey Hepburn as its producers feared that Monroe would complicate the production.
The last film Monroe completed was John Huston's The Misfits, which Miller had written to provide her with a dramatic role. She played a recently divorced woman who becomes friends with her Reno land lady, and three aging cowboys, played by Clark Gable, Eli Wallach and Montgomery Clift. The filming in Reno, and in the Nevada desert east of Carson City between July and November 1960 was again difficult. Monroe's and Miller's marriage was effectively over, and he began a new relationship with Magnum movie photographer Inge Morath.
Monroe disliked that he had based her role partly on her life, and thought it inferior to the male roles. She also struggled with Miller's habit of rewriting scenes the night before filming. Her health was also failing: she was in pain from gallstones, and her drug addiction was so severe that her makeup usually had to be applied while she was still asleep under the influence of barbiturates. In August, filming was halted for her to spend a week in a hospital detox. Despite her problems, Huston said that when Monroe was acting, she "was not pretending to an emotion. It was the real thing. She would go deep down within herself and find it and bring it up into consciousness."
Monroe and Miller separated after filming wrapped, and she obtained a Mexican divorce in January 1961. The Misfits was released the following month, failing at the box office. Its reviews were mixed, with Variety complaining of frequently "choppy" character development, and Bosley Crowther calling Monroe "completely blank and unfathomable" and writing that "unfortunately for the film's structure, everything turns upon her". It has received more favorable reviews in the 21st century. Geoff Andrew of the British Film Institute has called it a classic, Huston scholar Tony Tracy called Monroe's performance the "most mature interpretation of her career", and Geoffrey McNab of The Independent praised her "extraordinary" portrayal of the character's "power of empathy".
Monroe was next to star in a television adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's Rain for NBC, but the project fell through as the network did not want to hire her choice of director, Lee Strasberg. Instead of working, she spent the first six months of 1961 preoccupied by health problems. She underwent a cholecystectomy and surgery for her endometriosis, and spent four weeks hospitalized for depression. She was helped by DiMaggio, with whom she rekindled a friendship, and dated his friend Frank Sinatra for several months. Monroe also moved permanently back to California in 1961, purchasing a house at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, Los Angeles, in early 1962.
Monroe returned to the public eye in the spring of 1962. She received a "World Film Favorite" Golden Globe Award and began to shoot a film for Fox, Something's Got to Give, a remake of My Favorite Wife (1940). It was to be co-produced by MMP, directed by George Cukor and to co-star Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse. Days before filming began, Monroe caught sinusitis. Despite medical advice to postpone the production, Fox began it as planned in late April.
Monroe was too sick to work for most of the next six weeks, but despite confirmations by multiple doctors, the studio pressured her by alleging publicly that she was faking it. On May 19, she took a break to sing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" on stage at President John F. Kennedy's early birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden in New York. She drew attention with her costume: a beige, skintight dress covered in rhinestones, which made her appear as if she were nude. Monroe's trip to New York caused even more irritation for Fox executives, who had wanted her to cancel it.
Monroe next filmed a scene for Something's Got to Give in which she swam naked in a swimming pool. To generate advance publicity, the press was invited to take photographs; these were later published in Life. This was the first time that a major star had posed nude at the height of their career. When she was again on sick leave for several days, Fox decided that it could not afford to have another film running behind schedule when it was already struggling with the rising costs of Cleopatra (1963). On June 7, Fox fired Monroe and sued her for \$750,000 in damages. She was replaced by Lee Remick, but after Martin refused to make the film with anyone other than Monroe, Fox sued him as well and shut down the production. The studio blamed Monroe for the film's demise and began spreading negative publicity about her, even alleging that she was mentally disturbed.
Fox soon regretted its decision and reopened negotiations with Monroe later in June; a settlement about a new contract, including recommencing Something's Got to Give and a starring role in the black comedy What a Way to Go! (1964), was reached later that summer. She was also planning on starring in a biopic of Jean Harlow. To repair her public image, Monroe engaged in several publicity ventures, including interviews for Life and Cosmopolitan and her first photo shoot for Vogue. For Vogue, she and photographer Bert Stern collaborated for two series of photographs over three days, one a standard fashion editorial and another of her posing nude, which were published posthumously with the title The Last Sitting.
## Death and funeral
During her final months, Monroe lived at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Her housekeeper Eunice Murray was staying overnight at the home on the evening of August 4, 1962. Murray woke at 3:00 a.m. on August 5 and sensed that something was wrong. She saw light from under Monroe's bedroom door but was unable to get a response and found the door locked. Murray then called Monroe's psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson, who arrived at the house shortly after and broke into the bedroom through a window to find Monroe dead in her bed. Monroe's physician, Hyman Engelberg, arrived at around 3:50 a.m. and pronounced her dead. At 4:25 a.m., the Los Angeles Police Department was notified.
Monroe died between 8:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. on August 4; the toxicology report showed that the cause of death was acute barbiturate poisoning. She had 8 mg% (milligrams per 100 milliliters of solution) chloral hydrate and 4.5 mg% of pentobarbital (Nembutal) in her blood, and 13 mg% of pentobarbital in her liver. Empty medicine bottles were found next to her bed. The possibility that Monroe had accidentally overdosed was ruled out because the dosages found in her body were several times the lethal limit.
The Los Angeles County Coroners Office was assisted in their investigation by the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Team, who had expert knowledge on suicide. Monroe's doctors stated that she had been "prone to severe fears and frequent depressions" with "abrupt and unpredictable mood changes", and had overdosed several times in the past, possibly intentionally. Due to these facts and the lack of any indication of foul play, deputy coroner Thomas Noguchi classified her death as a probable suicide.
Monroe's sudden death was front-page news in the United States and Europe. According to Lois Banner, "it's said that the suicide rate in Los Angeles doubled the month after she died; the circulation rate of most newspapers expanded that month", and the Chicago Tribune reported that they had received hundreds of phone calls from members of the public requesting information about her death. French artist Jean Cocteau commented that her death "should serve as a terrible lesson to all those whose chief occupation consists of spying on and tormenting film stars", her former co-star Laurence Olivier deemed her "the complete victim of ballyhoo and sensation", and Bus Stop director Joshua Logan said that she was "one of the most unappreciated people in the world".
Her funeral, held at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery on August 8, was private and attended by only her closest associates. The service was arranged by Joe DiMaggio, Monroe's half-sister Berniece Baker Miracle, and Monroe's business manager Inez Melson. Hundreds of spectators crowded the streets around the cemetery. Monroe was later entombed at Crypt No. 24 at the Corridor of Memories.
In the following decades, several conspiracy theories, including murder and accidental overdose, have been introduced to contradict suicide as the cause of Monroe's death. The speculation that Monroe had been murdered first gained mainstream attention with the publication of Norman Mailer's Marilyn: A Biography in 1973, and in the following years became widespread enough for the Los Angeles County District Attorney John Van de Kamp to conduct a "threshold investigation" in 1982 to see whether a criminal investigation should be opened. No evidence of foul play was found.
## Screen persona and reception
The 1940s had been the heyday for actresses who were perceived as tough and smart—such as Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck—who had appealed to women-dominated audiences during the war years. 20th Century-Fox wanted Monroe to be a star of the new decade who would draw men to movie theaters, and saw her as a replacement for the aging Betty Grable, their most popular "blonde bombshell" of the 1940s. According to film scholar Richard Dyer, Monroe's star image was crafted mostly for the male gaze.
From the beginning, Monroe played a significant part in the creation of her public image, and towards the end of her career exerted almost full control over it. She devised many of her publicity strategies, cultivated friendships with gossip columnists such as Sidney Skolsky and Louella Parsons, and controlled the use of her images. In addition to Grable, she was often compared to another well-known blonde, 1930s film star Jean Harlow. The comparison was prompted partly by Monroe, who named Harlow as her childhood idol, wanted to play her in a biopic, and even employed Harlow's hair stylist to color her hair.
Monroe's screen persona focused on her blonde hair and the stereotypes that were associated with it, especially dumbness, naïveté, sexual availability and artificiality. She often used a breathy, childish voice in her films, and in interviews gave the impression that everything she said was "utterly innocent and uncalculated", parodying herself with double entendres that came to be known as "Monroeisms". For example, when she was asked what she had on in the 1949 nude photo shoot, she replied, "I had the radio on".
In her films, Monroe usually played "the girl", who is defined solely by her gender. Her roles were almost always chorus girls, secretaries, or models: occupations where "the woman is on show, there for the pleasure of men." Monroe began her career as a pin-up model, and was noted for her hourglass figure. She was often positioned in film scenes so that her curvy silhouette was on display, and frequently posed like a pin-up in publicity photos. Her distinctive, hip-swinging walk also drew attention to her body and earned her the nickname "the girl with the horizontal walk".
Monroe often wore white to emphasize her blondness and drew attention by wearing revealing outfits that showed off her figure. Her publicity stunts often revolved around her clothing either being shockingly revealing or even malfunctioning, such as when a shoulder strap of her dress snapped during a press conference. In press stories, Monroe was portrayed as the embodiment of the American Dream, a girl who had risen from a miserable childhood to Hollywood stardom. Stories of her time spent in foster families and an orphanage were exaggerated and even partly fabricated. Film scholar Thomas Harris wrote that her working-class roots and lack of family made her appear more sexually available, "the ideal playmate", in contrast to her contemporary, Grace Kelly, who was also marketed as an attractive blonde, but due to her upper-class background was seen as a sophisticated actress, unattainable for the majority of male viewers.
Although Monroe's screen persona as a dim-witted but sexually attractive blonde was a carefully crafted act, audiences and film critics believed it to be her real personality. This became a hindrance when she wanted to pursue other kinds of roles, or to be respected as a businesswoman. The academic Sarah Churchwell studied narratives about Monroe and wrote:
> The biggest myth is that she was dumb. The second is that she was fragile. The third is that she couldn't act. She was far from dumb, although she was not formally educated, and she was very sensitive about that. But she was very smart indeed—and very tough. She had to be both to beat the Hollywood studio system in the 1950s. [...] The dumb blonde was a role—she was an actress, for heaven's sake! Such a good actress that no one now believes she was anything but what she portrayed on screen.
Biographer Lois Banner writes that Monroe often subtly parodied her sex symbol status in her films and public appearances, and that "the 'Marilyn Monroe' character she created was a brilliant archetype, who stands between Mae West and Madonna in the tradition of twentieth-century gender tricksters." Monroe herself stated that she was influenced by West, learning "a few tricks from her—that impression of laughing at, or mocking, her own sexuality". She studied comedy in classes by mime and dancer Lotte Goslar, famous for her comic stage performances, and Goslar also instructed her on film sets. In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, one of the films in which she played an archetypal dumb blonde, Monroe had the sentence "I can be smart when it's important, but most men don't like it" added to her character's lines.
According to Dyer, Monroe became "virtually a household name for sex" in the 1950s and "her image has to be situated in the flux of ideas about morality and sexuality that characterised the Fifties in America", such as Freudian ideas about sex, the Kinsey report (1953), and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963). By appearing vulnerable and unaware of her sex appeal, Monroe was the first sex symbol to present sex as natural and without danger, in contrast to the 1940s femme fatales. Spoto likewise describes her as the embodiment of "the postwar ideal of the American girl, soft, transparently needy, worshipful of men, naïve, offering sex without demands", which is echoed in Molly Haskell's statement that "she was the Fifties fiction, the lie that a woman had no sexual needs, that she is there to cater to, or enhance, a man's needs." Monroe's contemporary Norman Mailer wrote that "Marilyn suggested sex might be difficult and dangerous with others, but ice cream with her", while Groucho Marx characterized her as "Mae West, Theda Bara, and Bo Peep all rolled into one". According to Haskell, due to her sex symbol status, Monroe was less popular with women than with men, as they "couldn't identify with her and didn't support her", although this would change after her death.
Dyer has also argued that Monroe's blonde hair became her defining feature because it made her "racially unambiguous" and exclusively white just as the civil rights movement was beginning, and that she should be seen as emblematic of racism in twentieth-century popular culture. Banner agreed that it may not be a coincidence that Monroe launched a trend of platinum blonde actresses during the civil rights movement, but has also criticized Dyer, pointing out that in her highly publicized private life, Monroe associated with people who were seen as "white ethnics", such as Joe DiMaggio (Italian-American) and Arthur Miller (Jewish). According to Banner, she sometimes challenged prevailing racial norms in her publicity photographs; for example, in an image featured in Look in 1951, she was shown in revealing clothes while practicing with African-American singing coach Phil Moore.
Monroe was perceived as a specifically American star, "a national institution as well known as hot dogs, apple pie, or baseball" according to Photoplay. Banner calls her the symbol of populuxe, a star whose joyful and glamorous public image "helped the nation cope with its paranoia in the 1950s about the Cold War, the atom bomb, and the totalitarian communist Soviet Union". Historian Fiona Handyside writes that the French female audiences associated whiteness/blondness with American modernity and cleanliness, and so Monroe came to symbolize a modern, "liberated" woman whose life takes place in the public sphere. Film historian Laura Mulvey has written of her as an endorsement for American consumer culture:
> If America was to export the democracy of glamour into post-war, impoverished Europe, the movies could be its shop window ... Marilyn Monroe, with her all American attributes and streamlined sexuality, came to epitomise in a single image this complex interface of the economic, the political, and the erotic. By the mid 1950s, she stood for a brand of classless glamour, available to anyone using American cosmetics, nylons and peroxide.
Twentieth Century-Fox further profited from Monroe's popularity by cultivating several lookalike actresses, such as Jayne Mansfield and Sheree North. Other studios also attempted to create their own Monroes: Universal Pictures with Mamie Van Doren, Columbia Pictures with Kim Novak, and The Rank Organisation with Diana Dors.
In a profile, Truman Capote quoted Monroe's acting teacher, Constance Collier: "She is a beautiful child. I don't mean that in the obvious way—the perhaps too obvious way. I don't think she's an actress at all, not in any traditional sense. What she has—this presence, this luminosity, this flickering intelligence—could never surface on the stage. It's so fragile and subtle, it can only be caught by the camera. It's like a hummingbird in flight: only a camera can freeze the poetry of it."
## Filmography
- Dangerous Years (1947)
- Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948)
- Ladies of the Chorus (1948)
- Love Happy (1949)
- A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950)
- The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
- All About Eve (1950)
- The Fireball (1950)
- Right Cross (1951)
- Home Town Story (1951)
- As Young as You Feel (1951)
- Love Nest (1951)
- Let's Make It Legal (1951)
- Clash by Night (1952)
- We're Not Married! (1952)
- Don't Bother to Knock (1952)
- Monkey Business (1952)
- O. Henry's Full House (1952)
- Niagara (1953)
- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
- How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
- River of No Return (1954)
- There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
- The Seven Year Itch (1955)
- Bus Stop (1956)
- The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)
- Some Like It Hot (1959)
- Let's Make Love (1960)
- The Misfits (1961)
- Something's Got to Give (1962–unfinished)
## Legacy
According to The Guide to United States Popular Culture, "as an icon of American popular culture, Monroe's few rivals in popularity include Elvis Presley and Mickey Mouse... no other star has ever inspired such a wide range of emotions—from lust to pity, from envy to remorse." Art historian Gail Levin stated that Monroe may have been "the most photographed person of the 20th century", and The American Film Institute has named her the sixth greatest female screen legend in American film history. The Smithsonian Institution has included her on their list of "100 Most Significant Americans of All Time", and both Variety and VH1 have placed her in the top ten in their rankings of the greatest popular culture icons of the twentieth century.
Hundreds of books have been written about Monroe. She has been the subject of numerous films, plays, operas, and songs, and has influenced artists and entertainers such as Andy Warhol and Madonna. She also remains a valuable brand: her image and name have been licensed for hundreds of products, and she has been featured in advertising for brands such as Max Factor, Chanel, Mercedes-Benz, and Absolut Vodka.
Monroe's enduring popularity is tied to her conflicted public image. On the one hand, she remains a sex symbol, beauty icon and one of the most famous stars of classical Hollywood cinema. On the other, she is also remembered for her troubled private life, unstable childhood, struggle for professional respect, as well as her death and the conspiracy theories that surrounded it. She has been written about by scholars and journalists who are interested in gender and feminism; these writers include Gloria Steinem, Jacqueline Rose, Molly Haskell, Sarah Churchwell, and Lois Banner. Some, such as Steinem, have viewed her as a victim of the studio system. Others, such as Haskell, Rose, and Churchwell, have instead stressed Monroe's proactive role in her career and her participation in the creation of her public persona.
Owing to the contrast between her stardom and troubled private life, Monroe is closely linked to broader discussions about modern phenomena such as mass media, fame, and consumer culture. According to academic Susanne Hamscha, Monroe has continued relevance to ongoing discussions about modern society, and she is "never completely situated in one time or place" but has become "a surface on which narratives of American culture can be (re-)constructed", and "functions as a cultural type that can be reproduced, transformed, translated into new contexts, and enacted by other people". Similarly, Banner has called Monroe the "eternal shapeshifter" who is re-created by "each generation, even each individual... to their own specifications".
Monroe remains a cultural icon, but critics are divided on her legacy as an actress. David Thomson called her body of work "insubstantial" and Pauline Kael wrote that she could not act, but rather "used her lack of an actress's skills to amuse the public. She had the wit or crassness or desperation to turn cheesecake into acting—and vice versa; she did what others had the 'good taste' not to do". In contrast, Peter Bradshaw wrote that Monroe was a talented comedian who "understood how comedy achieved its effects", and Roger Ebert wrote that "Monroe's eccentricities and neuroses on sets became notorious, but studios put up with her long after any other actress would have been blackballed because what they got back on the screen was magical". Similarly, Jonathan Rosenbaum stated that "she subtly subverted the sexist content of her material" and that "the difficulty some people have discerning Monroe's intelligence as an actress seems rooted in the ideology of a repressive era, when super feminine women weren't supposed to be smart".
|
2,803,546 |
Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies
| 1,100,904,949 |
Annual directory of London prostitutes (1757–1795)
|
[
"1757 establishments in England",
"18th century in London",
"Books about London",
"Covent Garden",
"Non-fiction books about British prostitution",
"Prostitution in England",
"Publications disestablished in 1795",
"Publications established in 1757",
"Social history of London",
"Women in London"
] |
Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, published from 1757 to 1795, was an annual directory of prostitutes then working in Georgian London. A small pocketbook, it was printed and published in Covent Garden, and sold for two shillings and sixpence. A contemporary report of 1791 estimates its circulation at about 8,000 copies annually.
Each edition contains entries describing the physical appearance and sexual specialities of about 120–190 prostitutes who worked in and around Covent Garden. Through their erotic prose, the list's entries review some of these women in lurid detail. While most compliment their subjects, some are critical of bad habits, and a few women are even treated as pariahs, perhaps having fallen out of favour with the list's authors, who are never revealed.
Samuel Derrick is the man normally credited for the design of Harris's List, possibly having been inspired by the activities of a Covent Garden pimp, Jack Harris. A Grub Street hack, Derrick may have written the lists from 1757 until his death in 1769; thereafter, the annual's authors are unknown. Throughout its print run it was published pseudonymously by H. Ranger, although from the late 1780s it was printed by three men: John and James Roach, and John Aitkin.
As the public's opinion began to turn against London's sex trade, and with reformers petitioning the authorities to take action, those involved in the release of Harris's List were in 1795 fined and imprisoned. That year's edition was the last to be published. By then, its content was cruder, lacking the originality of earlier editions. Modern writers tend to view Harris's List as erotica; in the words of one author, it was designed for "solitary sexual enjoyment".
## Description
### Introduction
The earliest printed editions of Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies appeared after Christmas 1756. Published by "H. Ranger", the annual was advertised on the front pages of newspapers, and sold in Covent Garden and at booksellers' stalls. Each edition comprises an attractive pocketbook, "beautifully packaged ... in the modish style of the twelves". They usually contained no more than 150 pages of relatively thin paper, on which are printed the details of between 120 and 190 prostitutes then working in Covent Garden. Priced in 1788 at two shillings and sixpence (equivalent to about £ in ), Harris's List was affordable for the middle classes but expensive for a working class man.
It was not the first directory of prostitutes to be circulated in London. The Wandering Whore ran for five issues between 1660 and 1661, in the early (and newly liberal) years of the Restoration. Allegedly an exposé of the capital's sex trade and usually attributed to John Garfield, it lists streets in which prostitutes might have been found, and the locations of brothels in areas like Fleet Lane, Long Acre and Lincoln's Inn Fields. The Wandering Whore incorporates dialogue between "Magdalena, a Crafty Whore, Julietta, an Exquisite Whore, Francion, a Lascivious Gallant, and Gusman, a Pimping Hector", with the caveat that it was disseminated only so that law-abiding folk might avoid such people. Another publication was A Catalogue of Jilts, Cracks & Prostitutes, Nightwalkers, Whores, She-friends, Kind Women and other of the Linnen-lifting Tribe, printed in 1691. This catalogues the physical attributes of 21 women who could be found about St Bartholomew-the-Great Church during Bartholomew Fair, in Smithfield. Mary Holland was apparently "tall, graceful and comely, shy of her favours", but could be mollified "at a cost of £20". Her sister Elizabeth was less expensive, being "indifferent to Money but a Supper and Two Guineas will tempt her".
### Content
Each edition of Harris's List opens with a frontispiece showing a mildly erotic stock image opposite the title page, which, from the 1760s to 1780s, is followed by a lengthy commentary on prostitution. This preamble argues that the prostitute is of benefit to the public, able to relieve man's natural inclination towards violence. It describes the customer as a patron supportive of a good cause: "be your purse strings never closed; nor let the name of prostitute deter you from your pious resolve!" Prostitutes were generally scorned by 18th-century society, and the 1789 edition's preface complains "Why should the victims of this natural propensity ... be hunted like outcasts from society, perpetually gripped by the hand of petty tyranny", continuing: "Is not the minister of state who sacrifices his country's honour to his private interest ... more guilty than her?"
At a basic level, the entries in Harris's List detail each woman's age, her physical appearance (including the size of her breasts), her sexual specialities, and sometimes a description of her genitals. Additional information such as how long she had been active as a prostitute, or if she sang, danced or conversed well, is also included. Addresses and prices, which range from five shillings to five pounds, are provided. The types of prostitute the lists present vary from "low-born errant drabs", to prominent courtesans like Kitty Fisher and Fanny Murray; later editions contain only "genteel mannered prostitutes worthy of praise". The charms of a Mrs Dodd, who lived at number six Hind Court in Fleet Street, were listed in 1788 as "reared on two pillars of monumental alabaster", continuing: "the symmetry of its parts, its borders enriched with wavering tendrils, its ruby portals, and the tufted grove, that crowns the summit of the mount, all join to invite the guest to enter." In the same edition, a similarly lurid description precedes the latter part of Miss Davenport's entry, which concludes: "Her teeth are remarkably fine; she is tall, and so well proportioned (when you examine her whole naked figure, which she will permit you to do, if you perform the Cytherean Rites like an able priest) that she might be taken for a fourth Grace, or a breathing animated Venus de Medicis ... she has a keeper (a Mr. Hannah) both kind and liberal; notwithstanding which, she has no objection to two supernumerary guineas." Miss Clicamp, of number two York Street near Middlesex Hospital, is described as "one of the finest, fattest figures as fully finished for fun and frolick as fertile fancy ever formed ... fortunate for the true lovers of fat, should fate throw them into the possession of such full grown beauties." More characteristic of Harris's List though, is the 1764 entry for Miss Wilmot, which tells of an amorous encounter with King George III's brother, the Duke of York:
> He gazed on her a while with eyes of transport and fondness, and gave her a world of kisses; at the close of which, in a pretended struggle, she contrived matters so artfully, that the bed-cloaths having fallen off, her naked beauties lay exposed at full length. The snowy orbs of her breast, by their frequent rising and failing, beat Cupid's alarm-drum to storm instantly, in case an immediate surrender should be refused. The coral-lipped mouth of love seemed with kind movements to invite, nay, to provoke an attack; while her sighs, and eyes half-closed, denoted that no farther resistance was intended. What followed, may be better imagined than described; but if we may credit Miss W-lm-t's account, she never experienced a more extensive protrusion in any amorous conflict either before or since.
The Duke of York was only one of many famous men to have been mentioned in the lists; others included James Boswell, Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover, the clergyman William Dodd, Charles James Fox, George IV, William Hickey, Francis Needham, 1st Earl of Kilmorey, Robert Walpole and many others.
### Commentary
The women's route into the sex trade, as described by the lists, is usually ascribed to youthful innocence, with tales of young girls leaving their homes for the promises of men, only to be abandoned once in London. Some entries mention rape, euphemistically described as women being "seduced against their will". Lenora Norton was apparently "seduced" in such fashion, her entry elucidating on her experience, which occurred while she was still a child. The "old urban legend" of young girls being apprehended from the crowd by devious bawds is illustrated by William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress, but although in reality such stories were not unheard of, women entered into prostitution for a variety of reasons, often mundane. Rural immigrants in search of work could sometimes find themselves at the mercy of unscrupulous employers, or manipulated into the sex trade by underhand means. Some entries in Harris's List illustrate how some women managed to lift themselves out of penury. Becky LeFevre, once a streetwalker, used her business sense to amass considerable wealth, as did a Miss Marshall and Miss Becky Child, who are each mentioned in several editions. Many of these women had rich keepers, and some married wealthy aristocrats; Harriet Powell married Kenneth Mackenzie, 1st Earl of Seaforth, and Elizabeth Armistead married Charles James Fox.
Elements of politicisation appear in some entries. The famed prostitute Betsy Cox's 1773 listing describes how, when refused entry to a gathering of polite society at the newly opened Pantheon, she was helped by, among others, the Duke of Fife, who drew his sword to enforce her entry. Some lists also contain defences of prostitution; earlier editions claim that the trade guarded against the seduction of young women, provided an outlet for frustrated married men, and kept other young men from "le péche [sic] que la Nature désavoue [the sin that Nature repudiates]", or sodomy. However, no such views were expressed with regard to lesbianism, which in England, unlike sexual acts between men, has never been illegal. Miss Wilson of Cavendish Square thought that "a female bed-fellow can give more real joys than ever she experienced with the male part of the sex", and Anne and Elanor Redshawe provided a discreet service in Tavistock Street, catering for "Ladies in the Highest Keeping" and other women who preferred to keep their activities private.
A common complaint regarding street prostitution was the foul language used, and while generally most entries in the lists look favourably on those women who refrained from swearing, the views expressed in the 1793 edition of Harris's List tend towards equivocation. Mrs Cornish's genteel nature was, on occasion, interrupted by "a volley of small shot", and Miss Johnson's proclivity towards "vulgarity of expression and a coarseness of manner" apparently suffered no shortage of admirers. Mrs Russell, attractive to "a number of clients among the youth, who are fond of beholding that mouth of the devil from whence all corruption issueth", was admired for her "vulgarity more than any thing else, she being extremely expert at uncommon oaths". Drinking, intrinsically linked with prostitution, was also frowned on. Mrs William's entry of 1773 is full of remorse, her having returned home "so intoxicated so as not to be able to stand, to the no small amusement of her neighbors", and Miss Jenny Kirbeard had, in 1788, a "violent attachment to drinking". Not all entries were disapproving though; Mrs Harvey would, in 1793, "often toss off a sparkling bumper," while remaining "a lady of great sensibility ... not a little clever in the performance of the act of friction." More generally, most entries are flattering, although some are less than complimentary; the 1773 listing for Miss Berry denounces her as "almost rotten, and her breath cadaverous". Prostitutes may have paid money to appear in the lists, and in Denlinger's view such commentary may indicate a degree of annoyance on the writer's part, the women concerned perhaps having refused to pay. Some listings also imply a degree of dissatisfaction on the part of the customer; in the 1773 edition, Miss Dean exhibited "great indifference" while entertaining her client, busying herself by cracking nuts while he was "acting his joys". Others are scorned for wearing too much makeup, and some for being "lazy bedfellows". A popular view that prostitutes were licentious, hot-blooded and hungry for sex was incompatible with the knowledge that most worked for money, and the lists therefore criticise women whose demands for payment appeared a little too mercenary.
### Possible authors
The identity of the lists' authors is uncertain. Some editions may have been written by Samuel Derrick, a Grub Street hack born in 1724 in Dublin, who had moved to London to become an actor. With little success there, he had turned instead to writing, publishing works including The dramatic censor; being remarks upon the conduct, characters, and catastrophe of our most celebrated plays (1752), A Voyage to the Moon (1753) (a translation of Cyrano de Bergerac's L'Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune), and The Battle of Lora (1762). Derrick, who lived with the actress Jane Lessingham, was an acquaintance of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. The latter viewed him as "but a poor writer", while Johnson admitted that "if Derrick's letters had been written by one of a more established name, they would have been thought very pretty letters."
Hallie Rubenhold's 2005 book The Covent Garden Ladies sets out her interpretation of the story behind Harris's List. She claims that John Harrison—otherwise known as Jack Harris, a savvy businessman and pimp who worked at the Shakespear's Head Tavern in Covent Garden—was the list's originator. Born perhaps around 1720–1730, Harris apparently had expert knowledge of prostitutes working in Covent Garden and beyond, as well as access to rented rooms and premises for his clients' use. He kept a record of the women he pimped and the properties he had access to, possibly in the form of a small ledger or notebook. Derrick, having previously authored The Memoirs of the Shakespear's Head, and possibly also its companion piece, The Memoirs of the Bedford Coffee House, was probably familiar with the Shakespear's Head. The former book details "Jack, a waiter ... who presides over the Venereal Pleasures of this Dome", and its author likely studied Harris as he went about his business. Which of the two men first thought to produce Harris's List is unknown, but probably for a one-off payment Harris allowed his name to be attached to it. With his detailed knowledge of Covent Garden, and with help from various associates, Derrick was therefore able to write the first edition of Harris's List in 1757. As an aspiring author and social climber he preferred not to associate himself publicly with such questionable material, and his name therefore does not appear on any editions.
Printed and published by the pseudonymous H. Ranger, responsible for such works as Love Feasts; or the different methods of courtship in every country, throughout the known world, the proceeds from the hugely successful first edition enabled Derrick to repay his debts, thereby freeing himself from a spunging house. His fortunes changed for the better when he became master of ceremonies at Bath and Tunbridge Wells in 1763. His death on 28 March 1769 followed a protracted illness, but despite a significant income, he died penniless. He left no official will, but on his deathbed he bequeathed the 1769 edition of Harris's List to Charlotte Hayes, his former friend and mistress, and a madam in her own right. Hayes died in 1813.
As the self-declared "Pimp General of All England", the swaggering Harris amassed a considerable fortune, but his indiscretion proved to be his undoing. Prompted by reformers, in April 1758 the authorities began to hunt down and close "houses of ill fame". Covent Garden was not spared, and the Shakespear's Head Tavern was raided. Harris was caught, locked up in the local compter, and then imprisoned in Newgate. He was released in 1761 and had some interests in publishing from 1765 to 1766, printing Edward Thompson's The Courtesan, and later The Fruit-Shop and Kitty's Atlantis, but he seems to have given this up late in 1766. He became the proprietor of the Rose Tavern, not far from the Shakespear's Head, but by the 1780s had delegated its running to an employee. The Rose was demolished about 1790, and for a few years Harris ran another tavern, the Bedford Head, with his son and daughter-in-law. He died sometime in 1792. The Shakespear's Head closed for business in 1804, and four years later the empty premises were badly damaged in the same fire that consumed the Covent Garden Theatre. What remained was subsumed by the neighbouring Bedford Coffee House.
### Later years
Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz claimed in 1791 that the lists were published by "a tavern-keeper, in Drury lane", and that "eight thousand copies are sold annually." There is nothing to suggest that Hayes had any involvement with any edition other than that of 1769, and the list's authors following Derrick's death have not been identified. From the 1770s Harris's List changes focus, moving away from the women of Covent Garden, to their stories. Its prose becomes more genteel, lacking the euphemisms which had helped make it so popular. These changes are echoed by the front cover, whose frontispiece becomes more gentrified. Material from earlier editions is recycled, and little attention is paid to accuracy. The responsibility for some of these changes can be attributed to John and James Roach, and John Aitkin, who from the late 1780s were the lists' publishers.
In 1795 the Proclamation Society, created several years earlier to help enforce King George III's proclamation against "loose and licentious Prints, Books, and Publications, dispersing Poison to the minds of the Young and Unwary", and "to Punish the Publishers and Vendors thereof", brought Roach up on libel charges. In court he highlighted the list's longevity, and claimed that "nobody had ever been prosecuted for publishing it; and, therefore, he was ignorant it was a libel." When Lord Chief Justice Kenyon mentioned that a John Roach had previously been convicted for selling Harris's List, Roach "assured his Lordship, that he had never been indicted before for this offence." He was nevertheless sentenced to one year in Newgate Prison, with sureties of £150 for three years, to ensure his good behaviour. Lord Justice Ashurst called the List "a most indecent and immoral publication", and of Roach's crime said "an offence of greater enormity could hardly be committed." Aitkin, indicted as John Aitken, may have been fined £200 for selling the same edition, although Rubenhold contends that by then he had died. After these trials, the list was no longer published. Only nine editions are extant: those for 1761, 1764, 1773, 1774, 1779, 1788, 1789, 1790 and 1793.
## Modern view
Harris's List was published for a city rife with prostitution. London's bawdy houses had, by the 1770s, disappeared from the poorer areas outside the city wall, and in the West End were found in four areas: St Margaret's in Westminster; St Anne's in Soho and St James's; and most especially, with more than two-thirds of London's "Disorderly Houses", around Covent Garden and the Strand. The area was noted for its "great numbers of female votaries to Venus of all ranks and conditions", while another author distinguished Covent Garden as "the chief scene of action for promiscuous amours." The Scottish statistician Patrick Colquhoun estimated in 1806 that of Greater London's approximately 1,000,000 citizens, perhaps 50,000 women, across all walks of life, were engaged in some form of prostitution.
Whether any of these women could confirm their addresses for publication in Harris's List is something that author Sophie Carter doubts. She views the annual as "primarily a work of erotica", calling it "nothing so much as a shopping list ... textually arrayed for the delectation of the male consumer", continuing "they [the women] await his intervention to institute an exchange", epitomising the traditional male role in pornography. Elizabeth Denlinger includes a similar sentiment in her essay, "The Garment and the Man": "This varied display of women to satisfy the 'great itch' ... is a fundamental aspect of the sphere to which Harris's List offered British men a carte d'entrée". Rubenhold writes that the variability in the descriptions of prostitutes over the years the list was published defy "all attempts to categorise it as either exclusively up-market or simply middle of the road." She suggests that the annual's purpose was to "conduct the desirous to the embrace of a prostitute", and that its prose was designed for "solitary sexual enjoyment" (H. Ranger also sold back-issues of Harris's List). Sold to a London public which was mostly patriarchal, its listings reflect the prejudices of the men who authored them. They were therefore not representative of women generally, and as she concludes, "it is likely that their stories would have differed quite significantly from those recounted by their customers for the benefit of the List's publishers."
Not every commentator agreed with Colquhoun's estimate, which became "the most widely quoted sum", but in the opinion of Cindy McCreery the fact that most people agreed there were far too many prostitutes in London is indicative of widespread concern about the trade. Attitudes towards prostitution hardened at the end of the 18th century, with many viewing prostitutes as indecent and immoral, and it was in this atmosphere that Harris's List met its demise. Books such as the Wandering Whore and Edmund Curll's Venus in the Cloyster (1728) are often mentioned alongside Harris's as examples of erotic literature. Along with the anonymously written Fifteen Plagues of a Maidenhead (1707), Garfield and Curll's works were involved in cases that helped form the 18th-century legal concept of "obscene libel"—which was a marked change from the previous emphasis on controlling sedition, blasphemy and heresy, traditionally the ecclesiastical courts' province. No laws existed to forbid the publication of pornography; therefore, when Curll was arrested and imprisoned in 1725 (the first such prosecution in nearly 20 years), it was under threat of a libel charge. He was released a few months later, only to be locked up again for publishing other materials deemed offensive by the authorities. Curll's experience with the censors was uncommon, though, and prosecutions based on obscene publications remained a rarity. Although their court action spelled the end for Harris's List, despite the best efforts of the Proclamation Society (later the Society for the Suppression of Vice), the publication of pornography continued apace; more pornographic material was published during the Victorian era than at any time previously.
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A Weekend in the City
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"2007 albums",
"Albums produced by Jacknife Lee",
"Albums recorded at RAK Studios",
"Bloc Party albums",
"Wichita Recordings albums"
] |
A Weekend in the City is the second studio album by British indie rock band Bloc Party. It was recorded at Grouse Lodge Studios in Westmeath, Ireland, in mid-2006 and was produced by Jacknife Lee. The album was refined and mixed at several locations in London at the end of 2006. It was released on 24 January 2007 in Japan and in the first week of February in the rest of the world, with Wichita Recordings as the primary label. The album peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart and on the Irish Albums Chart. In the United States, it entered the Billboard 200 at number 12.
Bloc Party worked to craft an album that distanced them from the conventional guitar band set-up by incorporating more electronically processed beats and additional instrumentation. Computer programs were extensively used to enrich and amend recorded takes, while a string sextet was hired to perform on some of the tracks. The subject matter of frontman and chief lyricist Kele Okereke's lyrics for A Weekend in the City covers issues such as drug use, sexuality, and the media's use of moral panic surrounding issues such as terrorism. The album's three original singles, "The Prayer", "I Still Remember", and "Hunting for Witches", address these themes respectively.
Bloc Party's new musical directions and more forthright lyrics either impressed or alienated critics. Reviewers generally treated A Weekend in the City as an important stepping stone for the band members in their quest for musical maturity, while The Guardian included it in its list of the "1000 Albums To Hear Before You Die". In November 2007, the album was re-released globally—with the final single, "Flux", as a bonus track—to coincide with Bloc Party's extensive touring schedule.
## Origins
All band members of Bloc Party conceived A Weekend in the City during 2005 while on tour in support of their critically acclaimed debut album Silent Alarm. Despite missing their home city of London, the quartet became increasingly disillusioned with the culture in the area each time they sporadically returned. Band member Gordon Moakes has noted, "The contrast we saw between being away on tour and being home ... we would see that London wasn't changing really and that the people we'd grown up with were part of that." Okereke wrote many songs in 2005 and early 2006 and used a concept he called "Urbanite Relaxation" to expand upon the themes of life and leisure in the metropolis. The band recorded around 30 soundchecks for the initial lyrics using a MiniDisc player. The rest of the tracks were written in April 2006 before they entered the studio recording process.
The band members drew up a shortlist of possible producers in early 2006, which included dance music-oriented staff such as Chemical Brothers sound engineer Steve Dub and high-profile producers like Garret "Jacknife" Lee. At the time, Moakes told Rolling Stone that the album would hopefully include electronic, processed beats and a sound in the vein of alternative rock band Radiohead and indie rock ensemble TV on the Radio. Bloc Party wanted to expand their sonic palette without losing the musical "jerkiness" of Silent Alarm. They selected Lee—who had worked with world-renowned act U2 and indie rock band Snow Patrol—based on the rapport that developed between the two parties while recording the demo song "I Still Remember", which later appeared in A Weekend in the City.
Moakes has explained the choice of producer by stating that the band members were looking to work with someone who could help them craft an accomplished album, "although as much as anything it's about finding someone who you'd want to spend six weeks in an enclosed space with". Before the studio sessions, Bloc Party listened to varied musical sources, from composers Philip Glass, György Ligeti, and Krzysztof Penderecki to urban artists Amerie and Missy Elliott. The band members were largely disillusioned with the evolution of contemporary guitar music and aimed to re-create the highly stylised production values of R&B and hip-hop records, while relying on an atmosphere similar to neo-classical music.
## Recording
In mid-2006, Bloc Party travelled to Lee's Grouse Lodge Studios in Westmeath, Ireland, to record A Weekend in the City. The band members initially worked by experimenting with their respective instruments and sound check arrangements. Moakes additionally focused on using different types of synthesiser. All parties soon moved to the main recording room, a large area with "a lot of natural ambience" according to sound engineer Tom McFall. A makeshift booth was built around the back of the drum kit to reduce any sonic interference, while a roof was sometimes used over drummer Matt Tong to isolate a pure sound. Different types of microphones were used for each component of the drum kit. The miking scheme was crucial to prepare the drum tracks for the looping and processing Lee planned using production program Logic.
The band worked by setting up all the instruments with only a single power amplifier. McFall has pointed out that distorted and heavily compressed mics were used to capture some of the room's ambience "to add a bit of grit" to the instrumental tracks; the recordings were often processed further using distressors, special types of compressor noted for their distinctively aggressive sound. The production staff tried other unconventional effects once the basic tracks were recorded. The band sometimes performed while Tong's kit was re-amped and played sections live while a brick was placed on the sustain pedal of a piano to capture the vibrations during the performances. During the six weeks at Grouse Lodge, Bloc Party tried multiple versions of songs and, at times, attempted playing live alongside recorded versions of the same track.
Lee recorded everything using Pro Tools and treated the parts as individual stereo files in Logic. The drum and guitar tracks were processed using computers. Much of the synthesiser-sounding parts of the album were generated by Russell Lissack's lead guitar following his extensive use of pedal effects. Lee added the live string, synth, drum machine, sample, and ambient noise tracks to create an expansive, hyper-stereophonic final product. After finishing the instrumental album, Bloc Party left Ireland to continue touring. Okereke later returned to Lee's studio to add the vocal tracks to the album; he has noted that he tried to "convey range and dynamics" rather than simply yelp the lyrics. Several track names were changed following the voice sessions: "Merge on the Freeway" became "Song for Clay (Disappear Here)", "A Prayer to the Lord" was renamed "The Prayer", "Wet" became "On", and "Perfect Teens" was renamed "Where Is Home?".
## Promotion and release
Bloc Party confirmed a preliminary track list of 13 songs in August 2006; this included future bonus tracks "England" and "We Were Lovers". A low-quality rip of A Weekend in the City was leaked in November and showed a track list of 11 songs. Wichita Recordings did not comment, but the band members were quoted as being worried about a reduction in the potential impact of the album's content and sales. Bloc Party started a promotional tour of North America the same month with Panic! at the Disco, but cut it short after three concerts when Tong suffered a collapsed lung. The focus was changed to interviews throughout the world to explain the album's stylised lyrics and composition in the run-up to its release.
Final tweaks on the album were completed in December 2006 in London. A high-quality version was leaked in January 2007 and its contents were confirmed by Okereke. Journalists who obtained an official copy of the album's final mix suggested that it featured electronically tampered rock soundscapes in the vein of Radiohead, New Order, and Björk. Bloc Party previewed A Weekend in the City in its entirety on 24 January 2007 at the Bournemouth Old Firestation, a performance which coincided with the Japanese release of the album. The first single, "The Prayer", was released on 29 January. The band performed at a special BBC Radio 1 showcase at Maida Vale Studios on 30 January as a precursor to a February promotional tour of the UK.
The album was released in the rest of the world in the first week of February. The title comes as a tangent to the central theme of the album, "the living noise of a metropolis". The cover art is part of A Modern Project by German photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg, famous for her night cityscapes of London and for the cover art of The Streets' Original Pirate Material. The photograph is an aerial image of London's Westway, which shows the road and the adjacent sports pitches lit by the sodium glow of street lamps, and was chosen because the band believed "it was important we captured London breathing". Luxemburg has explained that "in this picture you can see how intricately and optimistically public space in the city is shared".
## Content
### Lyrics
Okereke's lyrics attempt to juxtapose the monotonous events—nights out on club dancefloors and waiting for a train—with the seemingly epic experiences—terrorist attacks and racial angst—witnessed in a city environment. The direct narrative approach divided reviewers. BBC's Tom Young concluded, "Some will appreciate Kele's openness and revel in his philosophical focus on modern lives ... others will be too distracted by questionable content such as ... lines about sudoku to take Okereke's grumbles into consideration." Okereke has conceded that he was disappointed with the abstraction in Silent Alarm; he used The Smiths as inspiration to try to make a personal album with "a real centre". The lyricist has noted, "I wanted it to be a snapshot, a frozen moment in time. Like in a city, with thousands of stories going on at once, layered on top of each other ... Although I might be speaking through the voice of a character, I'm still expressing, perhaps, my sentiments."
The words to "Where Is Home?" begin at the funeral of Christopher Alaneme, a black teenager stabbed to death in Kent in April 2006 in a racially motivated attack. Okereke has described him as a "cousin" due to their Nigerian mothers' close friendship. The track castigates right-wing newspapers for perpetuating a hysterical fear of black youths in hoodies, an action which often leads to opportunities being denied to the Black British community at large. Populist media is also the target of "Hunting for Witches" (with the right-wing tabloid Daily Mail being singled out for criticism), whose subject matter is terrorism, namely the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Okereke has stated, "I guess the point about the song for me is post-September 11th, the media has really traded on fear and the use of fear in controlling people." Two songs, "Kreuzberg" and "I Still Remember", explore sexuality and homosexuality; the former is an account of promiscuity in the Berlin area of the same name, while the latter details an unrequited crush of a boy for his schoolmate.
The leading track, "Song for Clay (Disappear Here)", was inspired by Less than Zero, a novel by Bret Easton Ellis which depicts excessive hedonism and its effects on individuals. The song title references the protagonist Clay and a billboard in the book which displays the phrase "Disappear Here", while the action is relocated to Les Trois Garçons restaurant in Shoreditch, East London. "Waiting for the 7.18" provides an escapist counterpoint by mentioning a trip to Brighton following disillusionment with working life in the capital. The fifth song on A Weekend in the City, "Uniform", references London again and criticises the youth subculture in the area. It is directly inspired by Douglas Rushkoff's Merchants of Cool documentary, which details the corporate exploitation of popular culture by advertisement companies.
Okereke read Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle and Henri Lefebvre's Critique of Everyday Life, works which analyse how people experience leisure in modern societies, and was inspired to pen several songs which detail the drug and drink culture present in a metropolis. "The Prayer" is based on drug use during nights out in clubs, while "On" specifies the effects and after-effects of cocaine. Okereke tried to treat the tracks as explanations of people's actions, rather than moralising tales; he has stated, "In a time when so many people feel they can't communicate or feel hemmed in, I can see the appeal of cocaine." "Sunday" details the morning-after hangover following a drunken and promiscuous night out, while "SRXT" takes the form of a suicide note following the loneliness and despair of hedonism in the metropolis. The album closer is named after Seroxat, a trade name for the antidepressant paroxetine, and was crafted following the suicide attempts of two of Okereke's friends after they left university in 2005.
### Composition
A Weekend in the City is largely built around a mix of distorted and layered guitars, electronic elements, and multilayered vocals. The creation of compositions required a high level of technical proficiency and led to songs "tinged with discord". The opening section of "Song for Clay (Disappear Here)" includes a bare falsetto, while "Hunting for Witches" starts with a John Cage-like collage of spliced voices from random radio broadcasts as its main rhythm. The rest of the second track makes extensive use of guitar pedal effects and includes a heavily distorted riff. Moakes has pointed out that the original sound check of "Waiting for the 7.18" was a ballad with a simple rhythmic pattern on the glockenspiel before the band members added a drum and bass section to its second half. "Kreuzberg", "I Still Remember", and "Sunday" are the few songs to provide a counterpoint to the musical manipulation on the rest of the album by having more conventional indie rock arrangements; Moakes has called the compositions "lush, without being too syrupy".
In A Weekend in the City, layered vocals are often used to resemble choral sections, for example in the middle of "The Prayer" and throughout "Uniform", which has over 100 stacked vocal tracks. "SRXT" is a chiming ballad directly inspired by Brian Eno's "By This River" and incorporates double-tracked lead and background vocals. Synthetic aspects—drum machines, synths, and computer glitches—were included as integral parts of compositions. "The Prayer" is built around a computer sample and includes MTV Base-inspired urban contemporary beats and a prominent guitar solo towards the end. "On" is also a computer-reworked live take. Half of the song was recorded as a series of loops of drum beats and bass guitar chords. The recorded take was split in two to make up the first and last quarters of the track, while the middle section was intentionally left blank for the band to improvise in. "On" is one of two songs, together with "Where Is Home?", to use a string sextet. The latter track includes erratic rhythms and clashing guitars.
## Critical reception
Media response to A Weekend in the City was mixed, but generally positive; aggregating website Metacritic reports a normalised rating of 65% based on 30 critical reviews. Louis Pattison of NME described the album as "tender and reflective, edgy and embittered; a difficult and emotional beast that jolts with nervous electricity" and pointed out that its notable achievement is that it finds moments of genuine contentment amidst "a maelstrom of anger and confusion". Allmusic's Heather Phares did not find the album as immediate as Bloc Party's earlier work, but noted that "its gradual move from alienation to connection and hope is just as bold as Silent Alarm, and possibly even more resonant". Drowned in Sound's Mike Diver called it "dirty, dishevelled, unsure and paranoid; fearful, easily distracted, boisterous and ashamed; reckless, wild, nervous and terrified; graceful, thought-provoking, clumsy and contradictory ... and very nearly perfect." Jeff Miller of the Chicago Tribune concluded, "For Bloc Party, Silent Alarm was a baby step and this is a giant leap."
Michael Endelman of Entertainment Weekly was less receptive and stated, "Too often, the music on A Weekend in the City is less memorable than the ambitious subject matter." Robert Christgau, reviewing for Rolling Stone, suggested that the album fails because it lacks "killer choruses", while Sia Michel of The New York Times wrote that the multitracked vocals and baroque effects do not have "the wiry catchiness" of Bloc Party's previous work. Mike Schiller of PopMatters commented that the sonic direction the band had moved to was unsuited to the members' musical strengths, while Dorian Lynskey of The Guardian stated "grand statements are not earnest frontman Kele Okereke's forte...there's barely a song that isn't kneecapped by one of Okereke's lyrical clangers".
The album was named by Los Angeles Times in its unnumbered shortlist of the best releases of 2007. It figured in several other end-of-year best album lists, notably, at number eight by Gigwise, at number nine by Hot Press, and at number ten by The A.V. Club. The Guardian included A Weekend in the City in its "1000 Albums To Hear Before You Die" list compiled in November 2007 and praised the band's "ambitious indie soundscapes packing a sizeable political punch".
## Commercial performance
A Weekend in the City was a commercial success and entered the UK Albums Chart, the Irish Albums Chart, and the Australian Albums Chart at number two. The album was listed at number 56 on the end-of-year UK Albums Chart for 2007 and was certified Gold by the British Phonographic Industry. In the US, it sold 47,726 copies in its first week of release and entered the Billboard 200 at number twelve, a marked improvement on predecessor Silent Alarm which had only made number 114 when it was released in 2005. The album also topped the Billboard Top Independent Albums. According to Nielsen SoundScan, it had sold 148,000 copies in the US by August 2008. More than one million copies have been sold worldwide.
The first single, "The Prayer", became Bloc Party's highest charting song on the UK Singles Chart and on the Irish Singles Chart to date by peaking at number four and number 18 respectively. The song reached number 20 in Australia and is the band's only Australian Singles Chart career entry. The next single and the first US release from the album, "I Still Remember", entered the Hot Modern Rock Tracks at number 24 and became the band's highest charting US single to date. The third single, "Hunting for Witches", failed to chart in the US, but peaked at number 22 in the UK.
## Tours and re-release
Bloc Party started a lengthy promotional world tour for A Weekend in the City in March 2007, which included concerts in Japan, the US—where they also headlined at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas—Canada, and Italy. A few UK performances in mid-April were followed by a month-long headlining tour with Biffy Clyro, which covered most of mainland Europe. Bloc Party spent the end of May and the start of June 2007 on another headlining tour of the US and were asked to play at Live Earth upon their return to London. The band performed at the main stages of several European summer fests, including Glastonbury, T in the Park, the Reading and Leeds Festivals, Oxegen, and Summercase.
Bloc Party embarked on their second major worldwide tour for the album in August 2007, playing across Australia, the US, Mexico, and Canada. Upon their return to Europe, the band performed at the BBC Electric Proms with the Exmoor Singers as backing chamber choir. The final single from A Weekend in the City, "Flux", was released on 12 November 2007 after the European Flux Tour; a promotional CD of remixes of the song was given out free with the 14 November issue of NME. The track gave Bloc Party another top 10 hit in the UK Singles Chart by entering at number eight. A Weekend in the City was re-released with "Flux" in the track list on 16 and 19 November in mainland Europe and the UK respectively.
## Track listing
### Bonus tracks
When present, all songs follow "SRXT" on the January/February 2007 release after a silent three-minute pregap.
- "Secrets" (Canadian edition and Target version) – 4:06
- "The Once and Future King" (Canadian edition and Target version) – 3:20
- "England" (Japanese edition) – 4:15
- "We Were Lovers" (Japanese edition) – 4:12
- "Emma Kate's Accident" (Best Buy version) – 5:38
- "Version 2.0" (Best Buy version) – 3:19
- "Rhododendrons" (US eMusic download version) – 4:49
- "Atonement" (US iTunes download pre-order version) – 3:46
- "Cain Said to Abel" (US iTunes download version) – 3:24
- "Selfish Son" (Napster and Rhapsody download versions) – 4:59
Another B side, "Vision of Heaven" (3:32), was released as a promotional track exclusively at PureVolume.
### Additional formats
Vinyl
- Two LP versions of A Weekend in the City were released: a standard black vinyl copy in a gatefold sleeve and a limited edition picture disc version that has the album cover printed on Side A and the track listing printed on side B.
DVD
- In February 2007, a CD+DVD set contained in a red case was released in the UK and Europe simultaneously with the regular CD version of the album. The DVD contains footage of Bloc Party at Grouse Lodge and music videos for "The Prayer" and "I Still Remember".
- An Australian edition of the CD with an extra DVD was released in July 2007. The DVD contains remixes of "Hunting for Witches", "Uniform", and "I Still Remember", and live footage of the band at a special Channel 4 showcase.
- A new version of the CD+DVD was released in the UK and Europe in November 2007. This DVD contains live footage of the band at the 2007 Reading Festival and music videos for the album's four singles.
## Personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of A Weekend in the City.
Bloc Party
- Kele Okereke – lead vocals, rhythm guitar
- Russell Lissack – lead guitar
- Gordon Moakes – bass guitar, backing vocals, synthesiser, glockenspiel, electronic drums
- Matt Tong – drums, drum machine, backing vocals
Additional musicians
- James Banbury – string arrangements, cello
- Alison Dodds – violin
- Vincent Greene – viola
- Jacknife Lee – keys on "Waiting for the 7.18", "Where Is Home?", "SRXT"; production; programming; additional engineering
- Jeremy Morris – violin
- Liz Neumayer – backing vocals on "On", "Where Is Home?"
- Everton Nelson – violin
- Lucy Wilkins – violin
Technical personnel
- Sam Bell – additional engineering; additional programming
- Rut Blees Luxemburg – photography
- Neil Comber – mixing assistant
- Rob Crane – design
- Tom McFall – engineering
- Andrew Rigg – engineering assistant
- Rowen Rossiter – engineering assistant
- Cenzo Townsend – mixing
## Release history
## Chart positions
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
Singles
|
1,011,219 |
Gateshead International Stadium
| 1,172,459,416 |
Arena in Felling, Tyne and Wear, England
|
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"Buildings and structures in Gateshead",
"Diamond League venues",
"Football venues in England",
"Gateshead A.F.C.",
"Gateshead F.C.",
"Gateshead United F.C.",
"Rugby League World Cup stadiums",
"Rugby league stadiums in England",
"Sport in Gateshead",
"Sports venues completed in 1955",
"Sports venues in Tyne and Wear"
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Gateshead International Stadium (GIS) is a multi-purpose, all-seater venue in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England. Originally known as the Gateshead Youth Stadium, the venue was built in 1955 at a cost of £30,000. It has since been extensively re-developed on three occasions. Its capacity of around 11,800 is the greatest in the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead, the third-largest in Tyne and Wear (behind St James' Park and the Stadium of Light), and the sixth-largest in North East England.
The main arena is principally used for athletics. The inaugural athletics competition at the redeveloped venue, the 1974 "Gateshead Games", was instigated by Brendan Foster, a Gateshead Council employee at that time. By breaking the world record in the men's 3,000 m, Foster brought international publicity to the new stadium and began a tradition of athletics competitions at the venue, which has since hosted the British Grand Prix (2003–10) and the European Team Championships in 1989, 2000 and 2013. It is the only venue to have hosted the latter event three times. Five world records have been set at the stadium, including two by pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva and a tied 100 metres record by Asafa Powell in 2006.
Although the venue primarily caters for athletics, it is the current or former home to teams in several sports. It has been used by the town's main football club since 1973. Gateshead International Stadium was home to the Gateshead Thunder rugby league club during their spell in the Super League and the replacement Gateshead Thunder club played home games in the main arena, which was known as the Thunderdome when used by that team until the club relocated to Newcastle in 2015. Gateshead Harriers Athletic Club, which includes Foster and Jonathan Edwards among its life members, are the oldest tenants, having used the site since 1956. The stadium has also been used as a concert venue by numerous musical artists including Little Mix, Guns N' Roses, Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams and Tina Turner.
## History and development
The stadium is built on the site of two large chemical works opened in 1827 and 1834. These works initially thrived, but by the early part of the 20th century both were in terminal decline, and were demolished in 1932 to leave behind a 2-million-tonne heap of spoil. This land, approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) east of the centre of Gateshead, was cleared in 1942 but continued to lie derelict until the mid-1950s.
In early 1955, Gateshead Council began work on transforming this land. The Gateshead Youth Stadium, built on the site of the old chemical works, was opened by Jim Peters on 27 August 1955. Costing £30,000, the original venue contained little more than a cinder running track and an asphalt cycling track, though floodlights and a seating area were added soon after. On 1 July 1961, the arena hosted its first major competition—the Vaux Breweries International Athletics Meet—but according to sportswriter John Gibson, the Youth Stadium remained "little more than a minor track with a tiny grandstand and open terraces".
According to author Thomas Telfer, by the turn of the 1970s, the town of Gateshead was suffering from "the classic symptoms of decay in its inner-city areas". The response during the 1960s had been a programme of systematic derelict land reclamation and environmental improvement. While these measures did not have an immediate positive impact on the perception of the town, Gateshead Council pressed ahead by looking to develop existing infrastructure with a view to overall regeneration. One such opportunity was identified at the Gateshead Youth Stadium, where the council believed that investment might raise the region's profile and bring international recognition. In April 1974, Gateshead Council inaugurated a "Sport and Recreation" department. In July 1974, the council appointed Brendan Foster—a former schoolteacher turned athlete and a native of Tyne and Wear—as the Council's sport and recreation manager. Foster, who according to Gibson became "the father of Gateshead athletics", had been forced to train in Edinburgh during 1973 as a result of the poor condition of the Youth Stadium track. In December 1973, he had been invited to a civic reception to celebrate his breaking of the two-mile world record earlier that year at Crystal Palace. At this reception, Foster was told that a new synthetic track was being laid at Gateshead Youth Stadium. His response was a promise that, if the Council was serious, he would run at the stadium and break a world record (Foster later offered an explanation of that promise: "You know how it is when you've had a few drinks—you promise the world!"). When the track was laid in early 1974, Foster became convinced of the Council's sincerity. He was interviewed for the managerial position and, upon appointment, became the "driving force" behind the programme of improvements to the Youth Stadium, which included the building of the main, covered Tyne and Wear stand in 1981 and three accompanying stands; the venue was renamed the Gateshead International Stadium. This first tranche of improvements cost around £8 million, and Foster's proposal to commemorate the re-opening with an athletic event was approved, allowing for the first "Gateshead Games" to be held in 1974.
The success of the first Gateshead Games, and their subsequent annual renewal, raised the profile of the stadium and caused Gateshead Council to further their financial investment. During the 1980s, additions were made to the site infrastructure, including the building of an indoor sports hall, outdoor football pitches and a gymnasium. In 1989 the running track was again relayed and Gateshead confirmed its reputation as a top-class athletics venue by hosting the Europa Cup (forerunner to the European Team Championships). In the 21st century, the site has been the subject of two major re-development projects. The first was completed in 2006, when two artificial outdoor football pitches, indoor athletic training facilities, sports science provisions and conferencing rooms were added at a cost of £15 million. The revamped stadium, funded by collaboration between One NorthEast, Sport England and Gateshead College among others, was opened on 12 May 2006 by Sebastian Coe.
A second tranche of development, undertaken in two stages, was approved in November 2009. This included a general refurbishment and improvement of the existing facilities at the stadium, adding cover, better toilet and new refreshment facilities to the exposed East Stand, improving wheelchair access, adding extra catering and conferencing facilities and a new media and management centre. This was funded by collaboration between Gateshead Council, local development funds and Gateshead College. The covering of the 4,000-seat East Stand with a new canopy roof was completed in July 2010, immediately prior to Gateshead hosting a Diamond League event. The second stage of the re-development—the building of the corporate and media facilities—commenced on 6 September 2010 and was completed on time in summer 2011. The total cost of the work was estimated to be £7.6 million.
A third programme of expansion was initially mooted in 2008. The aim of this programme was to expand the stadium into an all-embracing "sports village", replete with an ice rink, indoor golf course, restaurants and shops. Gateshead Council invited tenders in August 2008 from commercial organisations interested in undertaking the development. A formal draft development brief was compiled and published in November 2009. A report to Council in December 2009 noted that there had been "a reasonable level of interest at the preliminary stage" from private investors, but that only one detailed proposal had been submitted, which had been declined by the Council on financial grounds. The report also noted concerns that the original centrepiece of the proposed village, the ice rink, may have been deterring investors and that a similar proposal to redevelop land at the Stadium of Light in Sunderland was detracting from what councillors had hoped to be a unique feature of the proposed village. The result was that a fresh proposal was raised to remove the ice rink from the brief in an attempt to "stimulate the market". A public consultation was undertaken and in May 2010 the council reported that 327 of the 375 responses received were in favour of the amended proposal. As a result, notice was given to developers that the council intended to market the site and ten responses were received.
## Structure and facilities
Gateshead International Stadium and its facilities occupy 24.4 hectares (60 acres) of land. The main athletics arena at Gateshead International Stadium is an all-seater, bowl-shaped arena consisting of four stands of seats. The precise capacity of the venue is uncertain; some sources claim it to be 11,750, others 11,762 and some provide a figure of 11,800. The main stand is the Tyne and Wear Stand, a steep, cantilevered structure seating 3,300 spectators. This stand contains toilet and catering facilities and a bar area. Opposite is the East Stand, a 4,000-seat structure that was uncovered until 2010, when a cantilevered canopy roof was added. A bespoke design by Fabric Architecture, the roof is a 30 metres (98 ft) structure incorporating five barrel vault forms. Part of the same improvement plan added toilet and catering facilities to the East Stand. The South Terrace, sometimes referred to as simply the South Stand, consists of a continuous, uncovered bank of seating in eight blocks with access through four turnstiles. The North Terrace is opposite and consists of two blocks of uncovered seating separated by a large scoreboard.
The athletics track in the main arena was laid in 2003 and is an International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) standard 400m eight-lane oval. It is a polymer synthetic tartan track with a depth of 3 centimetres (1.18 in). The sprint straight consists of eight lanes and is situated in front of the Tyne and Wear Stand, adjacent to the long and triple jump area. A height-adjustable water jump, for use in steeplechase racing, is located on the inside of the track. Floodlights allow athletics events to be held at night. The inner track area, which is floodlit, is an IAAF standard-sized grass surface used for athletics field events, rugby and football. When used for the latter, the pitch dimensions are 100 by 64 metres (109.4 yd × 70.0 yd).
The main arena is supplemented by other facilities. To the rear of the North Terrace are two third generation artificial pitches that are UEFA licensed, fully floodlit and full-sized for use in competitive rugby, football and American football. Alongside them are two grassed and one sand-dressed playing areas, which are also floodlit. Behind the Tyne and Wear Stand is an indoor sports hall, which contains a 33 by 44 metres (36.1 yd × 48.1 yd) playing area marked out for various sports including badminton, netball and tennis. A retractable indoor athletics facility was previously housed alongside the sports hall, consisting of a 50 metres (55 yd) long synthetic sprint straight and areas for throwing and jumping events, but its mechanical operation proved problematic and a more modern structure replaced it in 2006. This facility has a 60 metres (66 yd) sprint straight in an 82 metres (90 yd) hall, throwing and jumping facilities, a weights room and gymnasium.
## Athletics
The first major athletic event held at the stadium was the Vaux Breweries International Athletics meet in July 1961. According to its sponsors, the highlight of this meet was the team three-mile race, won by the Blackpool and Fylde Athletic club who were awarded a gold tankard as their prize. Attracted by a prize fund of £500 and the imminent AAA Championships in London, the event attracted several athletes from New Zealand, including reigning 5000m metre Olympic champion Murray Halberg and Peter Snell, the reigning 800m Olympic champion. Watched by a capacity crowd of 10,000 spectators, the men won their respective races; Halberg placed first in the mile with a time of 4:03:70 and Snell led a New Zealand one-two in the 880-yard event, finishing ahead of teammate Gary Philpott in 1:50:40.
When the comprehensive refurbishment of the stadium was completed more than a decade later, Brendan Foster (by this time a Gateshead Council employee) proposed an international athletics meet. On 3 August 1974, the first "Gateshead Games" were staged in front of around 10,000 spectators. Four weeks before he won the European 5000m title at the 1974 European Athletics Championships in Rome, Foster kept his earlier promise to run in the men's 3000m and won the race in a new world-record time of 7:35:20. According to journalist John Gibson, Foster's performance gave the meet, broadcast live by Tyne Tees Television, "landmark status". A plaque commemorating the record was later placed at the entrance to the stadium.
The Gateshead Games became an annual event, which gave the stadium credibility as a major sporting venue. In his managerial capacity with Gateshead Council, Foster was increasingly able to attract athletes to the games. In 1977, Foster had to intervene when BBC Radio Newcastle provided the wrong Ethiopian national anthem which, when played, offended Miruts Yifter sufficiently that he and his teammates started off towards Newcastle International Airport. The intervention worked—in the end, Foster asked Yifter and his teammates if they would sing the anthem themselves, which they did in the middle of the stadium—and Yifter returned to outclass a field including Steve Ovett over 5000m. The track was resurfaced by Regisport in 1982 and the venues' profile was further raised in the summer of 1983, when Gateshead-born athlete Steve Cram faced Sebastian Coe over 800m in the Gateshead Games. In front of a reported crowd of 15,000 who were "shoehorned into the bowl" and millions more watching on BBC's Sunday Grandstand, Cram prevailed to spark "pandemonium" in his final race before winning the gold medal at the 1983 World Athletics Championships in Helsinki.
In 1989, Gateshead hosted the Europa Cup. The men's competition was won for the first time by a Great Britain team captained by Linford Christie and which included Kriss Akabusi and Jack Buckner; the event was described a decade later as having had an "invigorating effect" on those who were in attendance. Four years later, on 30 July 1993, a stadium-record crowd of 14,797 watched Christie, by this time the reigning 100m Olympic champion, in action again – this time against his old rival Carl Lewis in a race where both men were reportedly paid £100,000 irrespective of the result. Christie won in a time of 10.07 seconds, ahead of Jon Drummond in second and Lewis, who finished "a distant third". The 100m race was the highlight of the "high profile" Vauxhall Invitational meet, which was televised in the UK by ITV and watched by around 10 million viewers. Michael Johnson, John Regis and Steve Cram competed in various events at the Vauxhall Invitational.
In August 1998, Gateshead was selected to host the 2000 Europa Cup after the European Athletic Association switched the event from original host venue Martinique to avoid athletes travelling long distances in an Olympic year. This made Gateshead the first venue to host the event twice. On 16–17 July 2000, spectators at Gateshead once again saw Great Britain's men's team take the title, this time by half a point from Germany in second place; the British victory came despite missing ten first-choice team members. The women's event was won by Russia, who defeated second-placed Germany by thirteen points.
Foster's "Gateshead Games" had become the British Grand Prix by 2003, and on 13 July 21-year-old Yelena Isinbayeva set a new world record of 4.82m in the women's pole vault event. Isinbayeva's achievement in the last event of the meet was so unexpected that only 1,000 of the 10,000 spectators witnessed it, the rest having left early. For her achievement, she was given a bonus cheque for \$50,000. On 27 June 2004, Isinbayeva returned to Gateshead. This time the event organisers decided to schedule the pole vault event earlier and were rewarded when Isinbayeva defied extremely windy conditions to post a new record mark of 4.87m. Isinbayeva was the second woman to set a world record in the pole vault at Gateshead; Daniela Bartova did so in 1995. In 2006, a crowd of 8,500 saw Asafa Powell equal the world record of 9.77 seconds in the men's 100m. The official, un-rounded time of 9.762 seconds was then the fastest time ever recorded. The meet was also notable for the return to competition of Dwain Chambers after his ban for using performance-enhancing drugs, and for Eliud Kipchoge breaking Foster's stadium record over 3000m that had stood for more than three decades.
In 2010, the British Grand Prix at Gateshead was chosen as one of the inaugural fourteen Diamond League events, but although competitors included Tyson Gay, Powell, Jessica Ennis and Vincent Chepkok, the attendance was unusually poor, causing the local press to wonder whether Gateshead's contract for the marquee event would be renewed. Those fears were to prove well-founded when UK Athletics agreed to a three-year contract to stage the event at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham. The move prompted one reporter to lament that "the switch is a major blow to both Gateshead International Stadium and North-East sport in general, but can hardly be regarded as a major surprise given the dwindling support for major athletics events in the region."
This loss was mitigated somewhat by the European Athletic Association's decision to award Gateshead the 2013 European Team Championships, the successor to the Europa Cup. In doing so, Gateshead became the only stadium to host the European Team Championships on three occasions. The championships were held on 22–23 June 2013 amid very wet and windy conditions. On the first day of competition, Mo Farah ran a 50.89 second final lap in winning the men's 5000m to help the home team into third place on 181 points, behind Russia (194 points) and Germany (195 points). Despite a strong start, the Great Britain team were unable to make up the deficit on the second day of competition and finished in third place overall on 338 points, behind runners-up Germany (347.5 points) and the champions Russia (354.5 points).
Due to redevelopment of Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, the British Grand Prix Diamond League fixture was set to return to Gateshead in 2020 for the first time in 10 years. The meeting was originally scheduled to take place on 16 August but was rescheduled to 12 September and then cancelled, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.
## Tenants
### Gateshead Football Club
The stadium was briefly used by former Football League members Gateshead A.F.C. after leaving Redheugh Park in 1973, but the club went bust later in the year. The following year South Shields football club relocated to Gateshead and were renamed Gateshead United; they played at the Gateshead Stadium from 1974 to 1977 when it folded and Gateshead F.C. was formed.
Gateshead F.C. have been tenants since their formation in 1977. In May 2008 Gateshead hosted Buxton in a promotion play-off and won 2–0 in front of 1,402 spectators, the largest crowd to watch the club at the ground in 14 years. That record was broken a year later when 4,121 saw Gateshead defeat Telford United 2–0 on 9 May 2009 to win promotion to the Conference Premier league. The current record attendance for a competitive fixture stands at 8,144, set on 4 May 2014 when Gateshead played host to Grimsby Town in the second leg of the Conference Premier play-off semi-final. Gateshead won 3-1 to progress to the final at Wembley Stadium where they were beaten 2-1 by Cambridge United. The defeat consigned the club to a 55th consecutive season outside the Football League. Gateshead F.C. continue to play at Gateshead Stadium but, according to North East Life magazine, it is "a fine but inappropriate stadium ... as a football ground it can be a soulless home". In 2009, chairman Graham Wood unveiled plans to move to a new, purpose-built 9,000 capacity ground on Prince Consort Road in the centre of Gateshead. Detailed proposals were published soon after, and Wood told local media in 2012 that he expects the move to increase crowds and alleviate the financial constraints on him as he continues to bankroll the club; it is estimated that crowds would need to reach 3,000 regularly for the club to operate profitably from Gateshead Stadium. According to the original proposal, the stadium was expected to be ready for the 2012–13 season, but financing has been difficult and the proposed move is now on hold.
### Gateshead Harriers
Gateshead Harriers are an athletic club based at Gateshead International Stadium. Founded in 1904 as Gateshead St Mary's Church Running Club, they were initially a men-only club until allowing the admission of women in 1951. The club moved to the Gateshead Youth Stadium in 1956, making the Harriers the stadium's oldest tenant. In 2006 they won promotion to the first division of the British Athletics League and were the only club from the north-east of England to compete at that level. After a six-year stay in the division, the Harriers were relegated to division two in August 2012 after failing to win enough points at the final meet of the season at Eton to prevent a bottom-two league finish. Club officials received over 100 new applications for membership in the aftermath of the 2012 London Olympics.
At least one Gateshead Harrier has taken part in every Olympics and Paralympics held since 1972. Notable alumni include Brendan Foster, who joined the club aged 17 and later claimed that "my first aim was to be the best runner of Gateshead Harriers". Foster, inducted into the England Athletics Hall of Fame in 2010 and recently voted the eleventh "greatest Geordie" in a local poll, later became the president of Gateshead Harriers and remains so as of 2012. Current world triple-jump record holder Jonathan Edwards, another member of the England Athletics Hall of Fame, joined Gateshead Harriers in 1991. Edwards was a member of the club when he set his record mark in winning gold at the 1995 World Championships in Helsinki, when winning Olympic gold at the 2000 Sydney Games and a second world title a year later in Edmonton. Both Foster and Edwards are honorary life members of the club.
### Gateshead Thunder
In 1998, Gateshead was awarded a rugby league franchise after a three-way contest with Cardiff and Swansea. The result was Gateshead Thunder, who played in Super League IV in 1999. The Thunder played at Gateshead International Stadium and the club had, according to sports journalist Andy Wilson, "an enjoyable and surprisingly successful season" which included home and away wins against St. Helens and a sixth-place finish in the table – missing out on the playoffs by two points. Despite these performances, which attracted an average crowd of 3,895 to Gateshead Stadium, the franchise lost £700,000 in its first year and in November 1999 the Rugby Football League (RFL) approved a merger with the Hull Sharks. The result was the formation of Hull FC, and when the authorities refused permission for the merged clubs to enter a Hull-based team into the RFL's second tier, the franchise moved almost in its entirety to Hull, ending Gateshead's Super League participation after a single season; according to Wilson, the Thunder was "left to die, provoking bitter resentment" from supporters.
There have been some highlights, including winning Championship 1 in 2008 and a run to the quarter-final of the Challenge Cup in 2009 which ended in a 66–6 defeat to Super League side St Helens. However, the Thunder went through a 64-game losing streak spanning two-and-a-half years before winning against Workington Town on 29 August 2012.
Relations between the Thunder and Gateshead Council were strained at times, with a possible move to Kingston Park Newcastle upon Tyne, first mooted, and rejected, in 2006. In 2008, the club committed itself again to Gateshead Stadium for the immediate future, however, in March 2014 The Journal reported that talks had begun between Thunder's managing director Keith Christie and representatives of Newcastle Falcons with a view to the Falcons taking over the rugby league club. Falcons' owner Semore Kurdi confirmed that a bid had been made to purchase Gateshead Thunder on 20 March 2014, though he refused to elaborate on whether he intended to relocate the club if that bid was accepted. The takeover was confirmed on 23 May 2014, though it was announced that the club would continue to play at the International Stadium. In January 2015 Gateshead Thunder were officially renamed Newcastle Thunder and relocated to Kingston Park. Keith Christie told the BBC that the move was "a business decision" designed to build a new fan base for the club.
### Gateshead Senators
The Gateshead Senators (originally the Gateshead International Senators) are an American football club formed in 1988 when the Newcastle Senators, who played at Northern Rugby Club, moved across the Tyne to play at the Gateshead International Stadium. The club has had mixed fortunes but their most successful season came in 1999. Having won eight of their nine games in the regular season, the team won the Division One North title and advanced to the end-of-season playoffs. After beating the Merseyside Nighthawks 43–0 in the quarter-finals, the Senators defeated the Essex Spartans 33–19 in the semi-finals to reach the championship final. At the Saffron Lane Stadium in Leicester, the Senators faced the Bristol Aztecs. In a tight encounter, the Senators claimed the Division One British American Football League title with a 7–2 victory. The club reached the playoffs again in the next three seasons but were unable to replicate that success, and after a season voluntarily spent in Division Two in 2003, returned to Division One North in 2004. They continue to play in that division, and in the 2012 season failed to make the playoffs after recording five wins and five defeats in their ten games.
The Senators were a tenant at Gateshead Stadium from 1988 to 2011. In 2012, the club announced plans to move away from Gateshead for the start of the 2012 season to create "a better game-day experience" and they now play at the Monkton Stadium.
## Concert venue
Gateshead International Stadium has been used for many years as a concert venue. On 31 July 1982, The Police performed at the stadium as part of their Ghost in the Machine Tour, with U2 as a supporting act. Reports in the local press suggested that The Police seemed disappointed that the stadium was only half full and cited high ticket prices and poor weather as possible causes. On 16 June 1992 Guns N' Roses, supported by Soundgarden and Faith No More, performed at the stadium. This time the weather was hot and sunny which helped ensure that the concert, part of the Use Your Illusion Tour, was a sell-out. American rock group Bon Jovi have played twice at the stadium. The first occasion was on 27 June 1995, while supported by Skin, on their These Days Tour. The group returned to Gateshead on 22 August 2000 as part of their Crush Tour. Another artist who has performed multiple times at Gateshead International Stadium is Tina Turner. As part of her Foreign Affair: The Farewell Tour, Turner performed twice on consecutive nights (21–22 July 1990) and attracted a total of 60,000 spectators. Turner performed for a third time at the stadium as part of her Wildest Dreams Tour on 12 July 1996. Most recently the venue played host to Little Mix on 26 July 2018 as part of their Summer Hits Tour. Other artists to have played at the stadium include Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart, Simple Minds and Simply Red.
## Transport
Gateshead International Stadium is 2 miles (3 km) east of Gateshead Town Centre and is on the A184 Felling Bypass, with access to a car park at Neilson Road. Journey time by car from Gateshead town centre is approximately five minutes and a further five minutes travel from Newcastle upon Tyne. A footpath runs adjacent to the Felling bypass and the journey by foot from Gateshead town centre takes some fifteen minutes. A journey east to Heworth Interchange also takes around fifteen minutes. Two designated cycle routes run past the stadium. These are Hadrian's Way, which provides access from Tynemouth in the east and Wylam in the west, and the Keelman's Way, which runs along the south bank of the River Tyne towards Blaydon-on-Tyne.
The stadium is well served by public transport. It has its own Tyne and Wear Metro station, the Gateshead Stadium Metro station. This is at Shelley Drive, some five minutes' walk from the ground. Trains run direct from this station to all other Metro destinations; trains to South Shields and South Hylton stop at platform one while trains travelling towards St James and Airport stop at platform two. The Gateshead Stadium Metro station is open seven days a week and at peak times seventeen trains per hour stop there. The nearest mainline railway station is Newcastle Central Station, around 3 miles (5 km) away, though local rail travel calls at Heworth Interchange. Go North East operate the 93/94 "East Gateshead Loop" bus service, which provides access to the stadium from the Team Valley, Gateshead Interchange, Heworth Interchange and Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Sheriff Hill. This bus runs every Twenty minutes during the day and every hourly during evenings.
|
2,238,902 |
The Last Temptation of Krust
| 1,153,946,516 | null |
[
"1998 American television episodes",
"Jay Leno",
"The Simpsons (season 9) episodes"
] |
"The Last Temptation of Krust" is the fifteenth episode of the ninth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on February 22, 1998. It was written by Donick Cary and directed by Mike B. Anderson. Comedian Jay Leno makes a guest appearance. In the episode, Bart convinces Krusty the Clown to appear at a comedy festival organized by Jay Leno, but Krusty's old material does not go over well with the audience and he receives bad reviews. He briefly retires from comedy but returns with a new, better-received gimmick. He soon returns to his old ways, selling out to a motor-vehicle company.
The production team's decision to write an episode about stand-up comedy was influenced by comedy festivals. The writing staff initially had trouble getting Krusty's offensive bad jokes through network censors, but convinced them this was simply a way to emphasize his old and dated comedic material. The "Canyonero" sequence was modeled after Ford commercials and was given its own segment at the end of the episode because the production staff liked it so much.
The episode was highlighted by USA Today in a review of The Simpsons' ninth season and received positive reviews in The Washington Times, the Evening Herald, and in books on The Simpsons.
## Plot
Krusty the Clown is persuaded by Bart Simpson to appear at a comedy festival organized by Jay Leno. Krusty's outdated and offensive material fails to impress the audience when compared with the trendier comedians also appearing. Discouraged by a negative review of his act, Krusty goes on a bender and passes out on Ned Flanders' lawn. While recovering in Bart's memorabilia-covered room, Krusty realizes that he should have spent more time honing his act rather than selling out, and he enlists Bart and Leno's aid. However, his attempts at observational humor fall flat with the Simpson family. Krusty holds a press conference to announce his retirement and in short order launches into a bitter tirade against modern-day comedians. The audience finds Krusty's rant hysterically funny and he subsequently announces his return to comedy.
Krusty is inspired to return to doing low-key events, where he structures a new image for himself as a stand-up comedian who tells the truth, criticizes commercialism, and refuses to sell out to corporate America. He also changes his appearance, sporting a dark sweater and tying his hair in a ponytail. Observing his newfound popularity, two marketing executives try to persuade Krusty to endorse a new sport utility vehicle called the Canyonero. Although he tries to resist, he eventually succumbs to the lure of money. After promoting the Canyonero at a comedy performance in Moe's Tavern, he is booed off stage by the patrons. He finally admits to himself that comedy is not in his blood and selling out is. The episode ends with an extended advertisement for the Canyonero, as Krusty and Bart leave Moe Szyslak's tavern in Krusty's new SUV.
## Production
In the DVD commentary for The Simpsons' ninth season, writer Donick Cary stated that the inspiration for the idea of an episode about stand-up comedy came out of comedy festivals at the time. Executive producer Mike Scully said that the writers had difficulty getting Krusty's offensive bad jokes through the network censors. The stereotypical jokes were allowed because the writers convinced the network censors that viewers would understand it was simply emphasizing Krusty's dated comedic material.
Mike B. Anderson stated that at least three different acts of material were written and animated for Krusty's comeback stand-up appearance at Moe's Tavern. It was not until the editing process that the material used was decided upon. The episode was still being animated three weeks before it was due to air and the production process moved frantically shortly before completion. The Canyonero sequence was originally planned to be displayed during the closing credits. The production team liked the scene so much that they did not want it to be obscured by the credits and gave it its own segment at the end of the episode.
## Cultural references
The episode title is a reference to the controversial novel (and later film) The Last Temptation of Christ. In addition to Jay Leno, other real-life comedians that portrayed themselves in the episode include Steven Wright, Janeane Garofalo, Bobcat Goldthwait, and Bruce Baum, whose appearance helped increase his popularity. Garofalo would return to guest star again as herself in the season 23 episode "The Ten-Per-Cent Solution". Krusty's "Krustylu Studios" is a spoof on the company Desilu studios, set up by Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz, where the series Star Trek was once filmed. During Krusty's "bender to end all benders" montage, he is seen drinking out of and vomiting into the Stanley Cup. The National Hockey League sent a letter regarding this scene. Mike Scully described it as a "kind of a cease and desist", but the production staff decided not to cut the scene from the episode. The poem recited by Krusty when he announces his retirement from comedy is based on "To an Athlete Dying Young" by A. E. Housman. Krusty attends the coffee shop Java the Hut, a reference to the Star Wars character Jabba the Hutt. Additionally, Krusty's anti-commercialism and anti-corporate stances, along with styling his hair in a ponytail, is a reference to comedian George Carlin who styled his hair the same way later in his career and often had anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist and anti-commercialist overtones in his performance.
### Canyonero
The "Canyonero" song and visual sequence was modeled after Ford commercials. The sequence is a parody of a commercial for a sport utility vehicle and Hank Williams Jr. sings a song about the Canyonero accompanied by country guitar music and whip cracks. The song "Canyonero" closely resembles the theme to the 1960s television series Rawhide. This episode was the first appearance of the Canyonero, which again appeared in the season 10 episode "Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers'. The "Canyonero" song is included on the 1999 soundtrack album Go Simpsonic with The Simpsons.
Chris Turner wrote positively of the Canyonero spoof piece in Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation, calling it "a brilliant parody of an SUV ad".
In an article in the journal Environmental Politics, Steve Vanderheiden commented that the Canyonero reflected an "anti-SUV" stance by The Simpsons. Vanderheiden wrote: "Even the popular animated television series 'The Simpsons' joined the anti-SUV fray in 1998, featuring a mammoth vehicle called the 'Canyonero' (marketed with the jingle: 'Twelve yards long, two lanes wide/Sixty-five tons of American pride!'), which promised to help the family transcend its mundane station-wagon existence but instead brought only misery."
The term "Canyonero" has since been used in the news media to refer critically to large trucks and SUVs.
In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about SUV owners, Vicki Haddock wrote "SUV owners have become something of a punch line, succinctly captured in a "Simpsons" parody touting the apocryphal Canyonero".
In a 2006 article, Seth Jayson of The Motley Fool compared the wording in a Ford advertisement myFord Owner Magazine to this episode, writing: "the unholiest of unholies is the writing, which is so thick with absurd adspeak, you'd think it was written by the crew at The Onion or The Simpsons – especially that episode where Krusty starts shilling for the Canyonero."
In a 2004 article in the Chicago Tribune, Jim Mateja noted that people have pointed out a similarity between the GMC Canyon and the Canyonero. When contacted, GMC responded that the GMC is a pickup truck, while the Canyonero is a parody of an SUV.
Joshua Dowling of The Sun-Herald described the philosophy of the Ford F-250 as "The Canyonero comes to life".
## Reception
In its original broadcast, "The Last Temptation of Krust" finished 21st in ratings for the week of February 16–23, 1998, with a Nielsen rating of 9.7, equivalent to approximately 9.5 million viewing households. It was the fourth highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following The X-Files, The World's Scariest Police Chases, and King of the Hill.
In 2006, USA Today highlighted the episode in a review of The Simpsons ninth season.
In his review of the season nine DVD, Joseph Szadkowski of The Washington Times noted: "Among the 22-minute gems found in the set, I most enjoyed ... [Krusty's] work with Jay Leno."
Mark Evans of the Evening Herald wrote: "'The Last Temptation of Krust' is a winner for its title alone as Krusty the clown becomes a satiric 'alternative' comedian but then sells out by advertising the Canyonero SUV road hazard."
Alan Sepinwall wrote positively of the episode in The Star-Ledger, citing the Canyonero sequence as "the real reason to watch" the episode and that "It's an oversize vehicle that will create oversized laughs."
Some sources mistakenly refer to this episode as "The Last Temptation of Krusty".
In the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood characterized the episode as "a good twist on the never-ending Krusty story" and suggested that while "Jay Leno turns in a nice cameo [...] the show is stolen by the advert for the Canyonero". The authors also praised Krusty's "ponytail and black sweater" look.
In the DVD audio commentary for "The Last Temptation of Krust", Leno said that he believed the essence of comedy clubs was depicted very well in the episode and referred to Krusty's remodeled appearance as "[George] Carlin post-Vegas act". He also appreciated Krusty's poke at Leno's use of news headlines on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and said that he could not figure out whether parts of the episode were making fun of him or complimenting him.
William Irwin's The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer references a scene from the episode as an example of Marge's passive resistance, her moral influence on Lisa, and her value as a role model for her children.
## See also
- List of products in The Simpsons
|
607,950 |
Bert Trautmann
| 1,173,505,051 |
German footballer and coach (1923–2013)
|
[
"1923 births",
"2013 deaths",
"English Football Hall of Fame inductees",
"English Football League players",
"English Football League representative players",
"Expatriate football managers in Liberia",
"Expatriate football managers in Myanmar",
"Expatriate football managers in Pakistan",
"Expatriate football managers in Tanzania",
"Expatriate football managers in Yemen",
"Expatriate men's footballers in England",
"Fallschirmjäger of World War II",
"Footballers from Bremen (city)",
"German football managers",
"German men's footballers",
"German prisoners and detainees",
"German prisoners of war in World War II held by the United Kingdom",
"Hitler Youth members",
"Honorary Officers of the Order of the British Empire",
"Liberia national football team managers",
"Luftwaffe personnel of World War II",
"Luftwaffe personnel who were court-martialed",
"Manchester City F.C. players",
"Men's association football goalkeepers",
"Myanmar national football team managers",
"Pakistan national football team managers",
"Prisoners and detainees of Germany",
"Recipients of the Iron Cross (1939), 1st class",
"Recipients of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany",
"Southern Football League players",
"St Helens Town A.F.C. players",
"Tanzania national football team managers",
"Telford United F.C. players",
"West German expatriate football managers",
"West German expatriate men's footballers",
"West German expatriate sportspeople in England",
"West German expatriate sportspeople in Liberia",
"West German expatriate sportspeople in Myanmar",
"West German expatriate sportspeople in Pakistan",
"West German expatriate sportspeople in Tanzania",
"West German expatriate sportspeople in Yemen",
"West German football managers",
"West German men's footballers"
] |
Bernhard Carl "Bert" Trautmann EK OBE BVO (22 October 1923 – 19 July 2013) was a German professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper for Manchester City from 1949 to 1964.
In August 1933, (aged 9), he joined the Jungvolk, the junior section of the Hitler Youth. Trautmann joined the Luftwaffe early in the Second World War, and then served as a paratrooper. He was initially sent to Occupied Poland, and subsequently fought on the Eastern Front for three years, earning five medals, including an Iron Cross. Later in the war, he was transferred to the Western Front, where he was captured by the British as the war drew to a close. As a volunteer soldier, he was classified a category "C" prisoner by the authorities, meaning he was regarded as a Nazi. One of only 90 of his original 1,000-man regiment to survive the war, he was transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire. Trautmann refused an offer of repatriation, and following his release in 1948 decided to settle in Lancashire, combining farm work with playing goalkeeper for a local football team, St Helens Town.
Performances for St Helens gained Trautmann a reputation as an outstanding goalkeeper, resulting in interest from Football League clubs. In October 1949, he signed for Manchester City, a club playing in the country's highest level of football, the First Division. The club's decision to sign a former Axis paratrooper sparked protests, and 20,000 people attended a demonstration. Over time, he gained acceptance through his performances in the City goal, playing in all but five of the club's next 250 matches.
Named FWA Footballer of the Year for 1956, Trautmann entered football folklore with his performance in the 1956 FA Cup Final. With 17 minutes of the match remaining, Trautmann suffered a serious injury while diving at the feet of Birmingham City's Peter Murphy. Despite his injury, he continued to play, making crucial saves to preserve his team's 3–1 lead. His neck was noticeably crooked as he collected his winner's medal; three days later an X-ray revealed it to be broken.
Trautmann played for Manchester City until 1964, making 545 appearances. After his playing career, he moved into management, first with lower-division sides in England and Germany, and later as part of a German Football Association development scheme that took him to several countries, including Burma, Tanzania and Pakistan. In 2004, he was appointed an honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for promoting Anglo-German understanding through football. Trautmann died at home near Valencia, Spain, in 2013, aged 89.
## Early life in Germany
Trautmann was born on 22 October 1923 in Walle, a working class area in west Bremen, living with his father, who worked in a fertiliser factory by the docks, and his mother Frieda. He had a brother, Karl-Heinz, three years his junior, with whom he enjoyed a close relationship. The bleak economic climate of the early 1930s forced the Trautmanns to sell their house and move to an apartment block in the working class area of Gröpelingen, where Bernhard lived until 1941.
The young Bernhard had a keen interest in sport, playing football, handball and völkerball (a form of dodgeball). To this end, he joined the YMCA and football club Blau und Weiss. He took to playing for the football club with enthusiasm, but the YMCA activities did not interest him to the same extent.
In August 1933, he joined a new organisation, the Jungvolk, the junior section of the Hitler Youth. The following year, he won several local junior athletics events and was awarded a certificate for athletic excellence signed by Paul von Hindenburg, the President of Germany. At the onset of the Second World War, Trautmann was working as an apprentice motor mechanic.
## Second World War
Trautmann joined the Luftwaffe as a radio operator in 1941. During training, he showed little aptitude for radio work, and transferred to Spandau to become a Fallschirmjäger (paratrooper). He first served in Occupied Poland, although being stationed far behind the front line meant experiencing prolonged bouts of monotony; consequently, Trautmann and the rest of his regiment resorted to sports and practical jokes to pass the time. One such practical joke involving a car backfired on Trautmann, resulting in a staff sergeant burning his arms. Trautmann was court-martialled over this incident and sentenced to three months in prison. At the start of his confinement, Trautmann came down with acute appendicitis, and spent the remainder of his sentence in a military hospital.
In October 1941, he rejoined the 35th Infantry Division at Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, where the German advance had halted. Over-winter hit-and-run attacks on Soviet Army supply routes were the unit's main focus and in spring, Trautmann was promoted to Unteroffizier (corporal). Gains were made in 1942, but the Soviet counter-offensive hit Trautmann's unit hard, and by the time it was withdrawn from the Eastern Front, only 300 of the original 1,000 men remained. Trautmann won five medals for his actions on the Eastern Front, including an Iron Cross First Class.
Promoted to Feldwebel (sergeant), Trautmann was part of a unit formed from the remnants of several others that had been decimated in the east, and moved to France to guard against an expected Allied invasion of France. In 1945, he was one of the few survivors of the Allied bombing of Kleve, and decided to head home to Bremen. By this point, German soldiers without valid leave papers were being shot as deserters, so Trautmann sought to avoid troops from either side. However, a few days later, he was captured in a barn by two Allied soldiers. Deciding that Trautmann had no useful intelligence to give them, the soldiers marched him out of the barn with his hands raised. Fearing he was about to be executed, Trautmann fled. After evading his captors, he jumped over a fence, only to land at the feet of a British soldier, who greeted him with the words "Hello Fritz, fancy a cup of tea?" Earlier in the war, he had been captured by the Soviets and later the French, but escaped both times.
He was imprisoned near Ostend, Belgium, then transferred to a transit camp in Essex, where he was interrogated. As a volunteer soldier who had been subject to indoctrination from a young age, he was classified a category "C" prisoner by the authorities, meaning he was regarded as a Nazi. Trautmann, one of only 90 of his original regiment to survive the war, was then transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp at Marbury Hall, near Northwich, Cheshire, and interned with other category "C" prisoners. He was soon downgraded to non-Nazi "B" status, after which he was taken to Fort Crosby in Hightown near Liverpool where he stayed for a short while working on local farms and mixing with the locals; from here he was sent to PoW Camp 50 (now Byrchall High School) in Ashton-in-Makerfield in Lancashire between St Helens and Wigan, where he stayed until 1948.
Football matches were regularly held at the camp, in which Trautmann played outfield. However, in a match against amateur team Haydock Park, Trautmann was injured while playing centre-half. He swapped positions with goalkeeper Günther Lühr, and from that day forward played as a goalkeeper. During this time he became known as "Bert", as the English were unfamiliar with "Bernd", the abbreviated version of his name.
## Football career
### Early years
With closure of the PoW camp imminent, Trautmann declined an offer of repatriation and stayed in England, working on a farm in Milnthorpe then subsequently working on bomb disposal in Huyton.
In August 1948, he started playing amateur football for the non-league Liverpool County Combination club St Helens Town, through which he met the club secretary's daughter, Margaret Friar, whom he later married. Over the course of the 1948–49 season, Trautmann's goalkeeping reputation steadily grew and a series of large crowds were attributed to his performances, including a record 9,000 attendance in the final of a local cup competition, the Mahon Cup. The success of that season elevated the club into Division Two of the Lancashire Combination League for the start of 1949–50.
### Manchester City
Performances for St Helens gained Trautmann a reputation as an able goalkeeper, resulting in interest from Football League clubs. As the following season commenced, a number of League clubs showed interest in signing him. The first to offer him a contract was Manchester City, a club playing in the highest level of football in the country, the First Division. On 7 October 1949 Trautmann signed for the club as an amateur and turned professional shortly after. Trautmann became the first sportsman in Britain to wear Adidas, thanks to his friendship with Adolf Dassler.
#### Supporter discontent and initial period
Some Manchester City fans were unhappy about signing a former member of the German Army. Season ticket holders threatened a boycott, and various groups in Manchester and around the country bombarded the club with protest letters. In addition to this difficulty, Trautmann was replacing the recently retired Frank Swift, one of the greatest keepers in the club's history. Though privately expressing doubts about the signing, the club captain, Eric Westwood, a Normandy veteran, made a public display of welcoming Trautmann by announcing, "There's no war in this dressing room". Trautmann made his first team debut on 19 November against Bolton Wanderers, and after a competent display in his first home match, protests shrank as fans discovered his talent. Before his first home game, Alexander Altmann, the community rabbi of Manchester, had written a remarkable open letter to the Manchester Evening Chronicle, appealing to City fans and the Jewish community to treat Trautmann with respect. He continued to receive abuse from crowds at away matches, which affected his concentration in some early games; in December 1949, he conceded seven goals at Derby County.
City's match against Fulham in January 1950 was Trautmann's first visit to London. The match received widespread media attention, as most of the British press were based there; several leading sportswriters watched Trautmann in action for the first time. The damage caused to the city by the Luftwaffe meant former paratrooper Trautmann was a target of hatred for the crowd, who yelled "Kraut" and "Nazi". City were struggling in the league, and widely expected to suffer a heavy defeat but a string of saves from Trautmann meant the final score was a narrow 1–0 loss. At the final whistle, Trautmann received a standing ovation, and was applauded off the pitch by both sets of players. The Manchester City team struggled throughout the season, and was relegated to the Second Division.
Manchester City returned to the top flight at its first attempt, and in the following years Trautmann established himself as one of the best keepers in the league, playing in all but five of his club's next 250 league matches. By 1952, his fame had spread to his home country, leading Schalke 04 to offer Manchester City £1,000 for his services. The offer was refused; the club responded that they thought Trautmann to be worth twenty times more.
In the mid-1950s, the Manchester City manager Les McDowall introduced a new tactical system using a deep-lying centre-forward, which became known as the Revie Plan after Don Revie who played centre-forward. The system depended on maintaining possession of the ball wherever possible, which required Trautmann to make use of his throwing ability. For goalkeepers of Trautmann's era, it was usual to kick the ball as far as possible downfield after making a save. By contrast, Trautmann, influenced by the Hungarian goalkeeper Gyula Grosics, sought to start attacks by throwing the ball to a wing-half, typically Ken Barnes or John McTavish. The wing-half then passed to Revie to develop the attack.
#### 1955 and 1956 FA Cup Finals
Using the Revie Plan, Manchester City reached the 1955 FA Cup Final, in which Trautmann became the first German to play in an FA Cup final. City faced Newcastle United, winners of the cup in 1951 and 1952. Nerves affected the City players, and they went behind to a Jackie Milburn goal after only 45 seconds. Further problems were caused by the loss of Jimmy Meadows to injury after 18 minutes, leaving City with 10 men, a disadvantage that meant Trautmann's ability to start attacks from throws was limited. Though Bobby Johnstone equalised in the first half, they struggled in the second, and after 57 minutes Trautmann was outwitted by Bobby Mitchell, who scored Newcastle's second goal. The match finished as a 3–1 defeat for City, giving Trautmann a runners-up medal.
Manchester City had a strong season in 1955–56, finishing fourth in the league and reached the FA Cup final against Birmingham City. Trautmann, one of the team's most prominent performers, won the FWA Footballer of the Year Award shortly before the match, the first goalkeeper to win the award. Two days later, Trautmann stepped out onto the Wembley pitch for the match that would gain him worldwide acclaim.
During the previous final, nerves had contributed to the opposition scoring an early goal, but the City team was more settled on this occasion. Under the influence of Don Revie who was outstanding on the day, City scored an early goal, a left-footed strike by Joe Hayes. Birmingham equalised on 14 minutes. The match remained level until midway through the second half, when Jack Dyson and Bobby Johnstone scored two goals in as many minutes to give Manchester City a 3–1 lead. Birmingham attacked strongly in the next ten minutes. In the 75th minute, Trautmann, diving at an incoming ball, was knocked out in a collision with Birmingham's Peter Murphy in which he was hit in the neck by Murphy's right knee. No substitutes were permitted in those days, so Trautmann, dazed and unsteady on his feet, carried on. For the remaining 15 minutes he defended his net, making a crucial interception to deny Murphy once more. Manchester City held on for the victory, and Trautmann was the hero because of his spectacular saves in the last minutes of the match. Trautmann admitted later that he had spent the last part of the match "in a kind of fog".
His neck continued to cause him pain, and Prince Philip commented on its crooked state as he gave Trautmann his winner's medal. Trautmann attended that evening's post-match banquet despite being unable to move his head, and went to bed expecting the injury to heal with rest. As the pain did not recede, the following day he went to St George's Hospital, where he was told he merely had a crick in his neck which would go away. Three days later, he got a second opinion from a doctor at Manchester Royal Infirmary. An X-ray revealed he had dislocated five vertebrae, the second of which was cracked in two. The third vertebra had wedged against the second, preventing further damage which could have cost Trautmann his life.
#### Recovery from injury
Trautmann's convalescence took several months, resulting in him missing a large part of the 1956–57 season. Jack Savage deputised during his absence. At the start of December, Trautmann played two reserve matches, but lacked confidence. He was restored to the first team on 15 December for a match against Wolverhampton Wanderers, but conceded three goals. He struggled to regain his form in the remainder of the season, leading to calls from some fans and media for him to retire. Others criticised the club, believing that Trautmann had been forced to play while still not fully recovered from injury.
The 1957–58 season was an unusual one for Manchester City, who became the only English team to both score and concede 100 goals in a season. Trautmann played in 34 matches, and though he did not play in the 9–2 defeat to West Bromwich Albion, an 8–4 defeat to Leicester City was a record for the most goals conceded by Trautmann in a match in his career, and in the entire season he kept only two clean sheets.
#### Testimonial
Trautmann appeared in 545 matches for City during the 15-year period between 1949 and 1964.
On 15 April 1964, he ended his career with a testimonial in front of a crowd officially numbered at 47,000, though the true figure was estimated to be closer to 60,000. Trautmann captained a combined Manchester City and Manchester United XI that included Bobby Charlton and Denis Law, against an International XI that included Tom Finney, Stanley Matthews and Jimmy Armfield.
### Later career
After leaving City, Trautmann played for Wellington Town, who offered him £50 per match, signing in September 1964 to replace an injured regular keeper. Age had diminished his abilities, but his debut at Hereford United showed he still had the ability to draw crowds. However, he was sent off at Tonbridge for violent conduct in his second match and, in all, ended on the losing side in five of the seven matches he played for Wellington.
## International career
Though recognised as one of the leading goalkeepers of his era, Trautmann never played for his native country. Trautmann met with the German national coach, Sepp Herberger, in 1953, who explained that travel and political implications prevented him from selecting a player who was not readily available, and that he could only consider including Trautmann if he were playing in a German league. Consequently, Trautmann's international isolation prevented him from playing in the 1954 World Cup, in which his countrymen were victorious. Trautmann's only experience of international football came in 1960, when the Football League decided to include non-English players in the Football League representative team for the first time. Trautmann captained the League against the Irish League, and also played against the Italian League.
## Coaching career
After a couple of months pondering his future career plans, Trautmann received a telephone call from the Stockport County chairman, Victor Bernard, who offered him the position of general manager. Stockport was a struggling lower league club with a small budget, and Trautmann's appointment was an attempt to improve its image. Many people in the local area supported one of the two Manchester clubs, so to stimulate interest Trautmann and Bernard decided to move matches to Friday evenings, when neither Manchester club would be playing. This improved revenue, but the team continued to struggle. Trautmann resigned in 1966 following a disagreement with Bernard. From 1967 to 1968, he was the manager of the German team Preußen Münster, taking them to a 13th-place finish in the Regionalliga West, following which he had a short spell at Opel Rüsselsheim.
The German Football Association then sent Trautmann as a development worker to countries without national football structures. His first posting was in Myanmar (Burma), where he spent two years as the national coach, qualifying for the Olympics in 1972, and winning the President's Cup, a tournament contested by south-east Asian countries, later that year. His work subsequently took him to managing Tanzania, Liberia, Pakistan and North Yemen, until 1988, when he retired and settled in Spain.
## Style of play
Trautmann excelled at shot-stopping, particularly penalties, saving 60% of those he faced over the course of his career. The Manchester United manager Matt Busby mentioned Trautmann's anticipation in his pre-match team talks: "Don't stop to think where you're going to hit it with Trautmann. Hit it first and think afterwards. If you look up and work it out he will read your thoughts and stop it." Similar sentiments were expressed by the Manchester City forward Neil Young, who recalled that "the only way to beat him with a shot in training was to mis-hit it". As a former handball player, Trautmann was adept at throwing the ball long distances, an attribute he used to start attacking moves, particularly after witnessing the Hungarian goalkeeper Gyula Grosics use such tactics to good effect in Hungary's 6–3 victory over England in 1953.
Trautmann found it difficult to accept criticism, and allowed only close friends to suggest changes to his game. He occasionally dwelt on mistakes to the detriment of his concentration, a tendency his friend Stan Wilson called "picking at daisies". A short temper also caused occasional problems; he was sent off on more than one occasion.
## Legacy and influence
Over the course of his career, Trautmann received many plaudits from leading football figures. The Russian goalkeeper Lev Yashin, himself considered one of the greatest goalkeepers of all time, believed that Trautmann and himself were the "only ... two world-class goalkeepers".
Trautmann's idiosyncratic style of play also had an influence on budding young goalkeepers at the height of his career. The former Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson named Trautmann as his boyhood hero, and Gordon Banks cited him as an influence on his playing style.
Media outlets have since recognised Trautmann's reputation. ESPN consider Trautmann as one of the greatest FA Cup goalkeepers, with Trautmann representing Manchester City in two consecutive FA Cup finals in 1955 and 1956 while his lunge at Peter Murphy's feet to grasp the ball in the 1956 FA Cup Final is rated as the greatest FA Cup save; a save that broke Trautmann's neck.
In November 1995, Trautmann returned to Maine Road to open the rebuilt Kippax Stand. However, the stand was gone within a decade: in May 2003 the club moved to the City of Manchester Stadium, Maine Road was closed and its stadium demolished the following year.
Trautmann was portrayed by German actor David Kross in the 2018 biopic The Keeper.
## Awards
In 1997, Trautmann received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He was appointed an honorary OBE in 2004 for his work in Anglo-German relations, and received the award at the British Embassy in Berlin, making him possibly the only person to have won an OBE and an Iron Cross. The following night, at a concert given by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, he met the Queen. "Ah, Herr Trautmann. I remember you", she said. "Have you still got that pain in your neck?"
In 2005, he was inducted into the National Football Museum's Hall of Fame. He continued to follow Manchester City and visited Manchester to watch them play, with his last visit in April 2010. In 1999, he had also appeared in the BBC Timewatch programme episode "The Germans We Kept", recounting the experiences of German prisoners of war who decided to remain in the UK.
## Personal life
Trautmann married a St Helens woman, Margaret Friar, in 1950, but they divorced in 1972. The couple had three children, John, Mark and Stephen. John, his firstborn son, was killed in a car accident a few months after the FA Cup Final in 1956, aged five. According to Trautmann, his wife's struggle to come to terms with the loss ultimately resulted in the breakup of their marriage. He also had a daughter from a previous relationship, from whom he was estranged for many years. He reunited with his daughter in 1990, and with her mother, Marion Greenhall, in 2001. He married Ursula von der Heyde, a German national, while living in Burma in the 1970s, but divorced in 1982. From 1990, Trautmann lived with his third wife Marlis in a small bungalow on the Spanish coast near Valencia. He later helped found the Trautmann Foundation, which continues his legacy by fostering courage and sportsmanship.
Trautmann's autobiography Steppes to Wembley was published in 1956.
### Death
Trautmann died at home in Spain on 19 July 2013 at the age of 89. He had suffered two heart attacks earlier in the year. The president of the German Football Association, Wolfgang Niersbach, said that Trautmann was "an amazing sportsman and a true gentleman ... a legend". Bob Wilson, a former Arsenal goalkeeper, tweeted, "Amazing man who helped bring our warring countries closer together". Joe Corrigan, a former Manchester City goalkeeper, said Trautmann was "a fantastic man and was one of the greatest goalkeepers of all time".
## Career statistics
Sources: Rowlands, Trautmann: The Biography, p. 252; James, Manchester City: The Complete Record, pp. 367–395.
## Honours
Manchester City
- FA Cup: 1955–56
Individual
- Iron Cross First Class: 1942
- FWA Footballer of the Year: 1956
- Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany: 1997
- Order of the British Empire: 2004
- English Football Hall of Fame: 2005
- Germany's Sports Hall of Fame: 2011
|
1,162,324 |
The General in His Labyrinth
| 1,173,105,656 |
1989 novel by Gabriel García Márquez
|
[
"1989 novels",
"20th-century Colombian novels",
"Alfred A. Knopf books",
"Colombian magic realism novels",
"Cultural depictions of Simón Bolívar",
"Dictator novels",
"Historical novels",
"Novels about revolutionaries",
"Novels by Gabriel García Márquez",
"Novels set in Colombia",
"Spanish-language novels",
"Works about the Spanish American wars of independence"
] |
The General in His Labyrinth (original Spanish title: El general en su laberinto) is a 1989 dictator novel by Colombian writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez. It is a fictionalized account of the last seven months of Simón Bolívar, liberator and leader of Gran Colombia. The book traces Bolívar's final journey from Bogotá to the Caribbean coastline of Colombia in his attempt to leave South America for exile in Europe. Breaking with the traditional heroic portrayal of Bolívar El Libertador, García Márquez depicts a pathetic protagonist, a prematurely aged man who is physically ill and mentally exhausted. The story explores the labyrinth of Bolívar's life through the narrative of his memories, in which "despair, sickness, and death inevitably win out over love, health, and life".
Following the success of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), García Márquez decided to write about the "Great Liberator" after reading an unfinished novel by his friend Álvaro Mutis. He borrowed the setting—Bolívar's voyage down the Magdalena River in 1830—from Mutis. García Márquez spent two years researching the subject, encompassing the extensive memoirs of Bolívar's Irish aide-de-camp, Daniel Florencio O'Leary, as well as numerous other historical documents and consultations with academics.
Its mixture of genres makes The General in His Labyrinth difficult to classify, and commentators disagree over where it lies on the scale between novel and historical account. García Márquez's insertion of interpretive and fictionalized elements—some dealing with Bolívar's most intimate moments—initially caused outrage in parts of Latin America. Many prominent Latin American figures believed that the novel portrayed a negative image to the outside world of one of the region's most important historic figures. Others saw The General in His Labyrinth as a tonic for Latin American culture and a challenge to the region to deal with its problems.
## Background
The initial idea to write a book about Simón Bolívar came to García Márquez through his friend and fellow Colombian writer Álvaro Mutis, to whom the book is dedicated. Mutis had started writing a book called El último rostro about Bolívar's final voyage along the Magdalena River, but never finished it. At the time, García Márquez was interested in writing about the Magdalena River because he knew the area intimately from his childhood. Two years after reading El Último Rostro, García Márquez asked Mutis for his permission to write a book on Bolívar's last voyage.
García Márquez believed that most of the information available on Bolívar was one-dimensional: "No one ever said in Bolívar's biographies that he sang or that he was constipated ... but historians don't say these things because they think they are not important." In the epilogue to the novel, García Márquez writes that he researched the book for two years; the task was difficult, both because of his lack of experience in conducting historical research, and the lack of documentary evidence for the events of the final period of Bolívar's life.
García Márquez researched a wide variety of historical documents, including Bolívar's letters, 19th-century newspapers, and Daniel Florencio O'Leary's 34 volumes of memoirs. He engaged the help of various experts, among them geographer Gladstone Oliva; historian and fellow Colombian Eugenio Gutiérrez Celys, who had co-written a book called Bolívar Día a Día with historian Fabio Puyo; and astronomer Jorge Perezdoval—García Márquez used an inventory drawn up by Perezdoval to describe which nights Bolívar spent under a full moon. García Márquez also worked closely with Antonio Bolívar Goyanes, a distant relative of Bolívar, during the extensive editing of the book.
### Historical context
The novel is set in 1830, at the tail end of the initial campaign to secure Latin America's independence from Spain. Most of Spanish America had gained independence by this date; only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule.
Within a few decades of Christopher Columbus's landing on the coast of what is now Venezuela in 1498, South America had been effectively conquered by Spain and Portugal. By the beginning of the 19th century, several factors affected Spain's control over its colonies: Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808, the abdication of Charles IV, Ferdinand VII's renouncement of his right to succeed, and the placement of Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne. The colonies were virtually cut off from Spain, and the American and French Revolutions inspired many creoles—American-born descendants of Spanish settlers—to take advantage of Spanish weakness. As a result, Latin America was run by independent juntas and colonial self-governments.
The early 19th century saw the first attempts at securing liberation from Spain, which were led in northern South America by Bolívar. He and the independence movements won numerous battles in Venezuela, New Granada and present-day Ecuador and Peru. His dream of uniting the Spanish American nations under one central government was almost achieved. However, shortly after the South American colonies became independent of Spain, problems developed in the capitals, and civil wars were sparked in some provinces; Bolívar lost many of his supporters and fell ill. Opposition to his presidency continued to increase, and in 1830, after 11 years of rule, he resigned as president of Gran Colombia.
## Plot summary
The novel is written in the third-person with flashbacks to specific events in the life of Simón Bolívar, "the General". It begins on May 8, 1830, in Santa Fe de Bogotá. The General is preparing for his journey towards the port of Cartagena de Indias, intending to leave Colombia for Europe. Following his resignation as President of Gran Colombia, the people of the lands he liberated have now turned against him, scrawling anti-Bolívar graffiti and throwing waste at him. The General is anxious to move on, but has to remind the Vice-president-elect, General Domingo Caycedo, that he has yet to receive a valid passport to leave the country. The General leaves Bogotá with the few officials still faithful to him, including his confidante and aide-de-camp, José Palacios. At the end of the first chapter, the General is referred to by his full title, General Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios, for the only time in the novel.
On the first night of the voyage, the General stays at Facatativá with his entourage, which consists of José Palacios, five aides-de-camp, his clerks, and his dogs. Here, as throughout the journey that follows, the General's loss of prestige is evident; the downturn in his fortunes surprises even the General himself. His unidentified illness has led to his physical deterioration, which makes him unrecognizable, and his aide-de-camp is constantly mistaken for the Liberator.
After many delays, the General and his party arrive in Honda, where the Governor, Posada Gutiérrez, has arranged for three days of fiestas. On his last night in Honda, the General returns late to camp and finds one of his old friends, Miranda Lyndsay, waiting for him. The General recalls that fifteen years ago, she had learned of a plot against his life and had saved him. The following morning, the General begins the voyage down the Magdalena River. Both his physical debilitation and pride are evident as he negotiates the slope to the dock: he is in need of a sedan chair but refuses to use it. The group stays a night in Puerto Real, where the General claims he sees a woman singing during the night. His aides-de-camp and the watchman conduct a search, but they fail to uncover any sign of a woman having been in the vicinity.
The General and his entourage arrive at the port of Mompox. Here they are stopped by police, who fail to recognize the General. They ask for his passport, but he is unable to produce one. Eventually, the police discover his identity and escort him into the port. The people still believe him to be the President of Gran Colombia and prepare banquets in his honor; but these festivities are wasted on him due to his lack of strength and appetite. After several days, the General and his entourage set off for Turbaco.
The group spend a sleepless night in Barranca Nueva before they arrive in Turbaco. Their original plan was to continue to Cartagena the following day, but the General is informed that there is no available ship bound for Europe from the port and that his passport still has not arrived. While staying in the town, he receives a visit from General Mariano Montilla and a few other friends. The deterioration of his health becomes increasingly evident—one of his visitors describes his face as that of a dead man. In Turbaco, the General is joined by General Daniel Florencio O'Leary and receives news of ongoing political machinations: Joaquín Mosquera, appointed successor as President of Gran Colombia, has assumed power but his legitimacy is still contested by General Rafael Urdaneta. The General recalls that his "dream began to fall apart on the very day it was realized".
The General finally receives his passport, and two days later he sets off with his entourage for Cartagena and the coast, where more receptions are held in his honor. Throughout this time, he is surrounded by women but is too weak to engage in sexual relations. The General is deeply affected when he hears that his good friend and preferred successor for the presidency, Field Marshal Sucre, has been ambushed and assassinated.
The General is now told by one of his aides-de-camp that General Rafael Urdaneta has taken over the government in Bogotá, and there are reports of demonstrations and riots in support of a return to power by Bolívar. The General's group travel to the town of Soledad, where he stays for more than a month, his health declining further. In Soledad, the General agrees to see a physician for the first time.
The General never leaves South America. He finishes his journey in Santa Marta, too weak to continue and with only his doctor and his closest aides by his side. He dies in poverty, a shadow of the man who liberated much of the continent.
## Characters
### The General
The leading character in the novel is "the General", also called "the Liberator". García Márquez only once names his protagonist as Simón Bolívar, the famous historical figure, whose full title was General Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios, on whom the General's character is based. The novel's portrait of a national and Latin American hero, which challenges the historical record, provoked outrage in some quarters on its publication.
At the beginning of the novel, the General is 46 years old and slowly dying on his last journey to the port of Cartagena de Indias, where he plans to set sail for Europe. As Palencia-Roth notes, "Bolívar is cast here not only as a victim but as an agent of Latin America's tragic political flaws". The fortunes of the historical Simón Bolívar began to decline in 1824 after the victory of his general Antonio José de Sucre at Ayacucho. The novel draws on the fact that the historical Bolívar never remarried after the death of his wife, María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alayza. García Márquez uses other documented facts as starting points for his fictional portrait of Bolívar–for example, his dedication to the army above all else, his premature aging, and his bad temper. Of the latter, Bolívar's aide-de-camp O'Leary once remarked that "his imperious and impatient temperament would never tolerate the smallest delay in the execution of an order".
In an interview with María Elvira Samper, García Márquez has admitted that his portrayal of Bolívar is partly a self-portrait. He identifies with Bolívar in many ways, since their method of controlling their anger is the same and their philosophical views are similar: neither "pays much attention to death, because that distracts one from the most important thing: what one does in life".
### José Palacios
The novel begins with the name of José Palacios, who, here as with the historical figure of the same name, is Bolívar's "long-serving mayordomo". As literary critic Seymour Menton observes, Palacios's "total identification with Bolívar constitutes the novel's frame". Palacios constantly waits on the General, and at certain times he alone is allowed in the General's room. He has learned to live with his master's unpredictability and does not presume to read his thoughts. Simultaneously, however, Palacios is also the General's closest confidante, the person best able to read his moods and share in his emotions. Born a slave, the character is six years younger than the General, and has spent his entire life in his service. Throughout the novel, Palacios provides the General with clarifications or reminders of dates and events during the General's time of disillusion. According to one critic, Palacios's ability to recall past events in Bolívar's life is essential for García Márquez's recreation of the character, as it allows the Bolívar of official history to be placed within the context of everyday life.
### Manuela Sáenz
Manuela Sáenz is the General's long-time lover, his last since the death of his wife, 27 years earlier. Her character is based on Simón Bolívar's historical mistress Doña Manuela Sáenz de Thorne, whom Bolívar dubbed "the liberator of the liberator" after she helped save him from an assassination attempt on the night of September 25, 1828. García Márquez's fictional portrait stimulated a reassessment of this historical figure, who is increasingly seen, according to Venezuelan historian Denzil Romero, "not just as a mistress but as the intelligent, independent, forceful woman she was". In the novel, she is described as "the bold Quiteña who loved him but was not going to follow him to his death". The General leaves Manuela Sáenz behind, but throughout the novel he writes to her on his journey. She also attempts to write letters to him with news of the political situation, but the mail carriers have been instructed not to accept her letters. Like the historical figure on whom she is based, the fictional Manuela Sáenz is married to Dr. James Thorne, an English physician twice her age. The historical Manuela Sáenz left Thorne after Bolívar wrote declaring his undying love for her. In the novel she is characterized as astute and indomitable, with "irresistible grace, a sense of power, and unbounded tenacity".
### General Francisco de Paula Santander
As he reflects on the past, the General often thinks and dreams about his former friend Francisco de Paula Santander. The historical Francisco de Paula Santander was a friend of Simón Bolívar, but was later accused of complicity in a plot to assassinate him and sent into exile. In the novel, the General remembers that he had once appointed Santander to govern Colombia because he believed him to be an effective and brave soldier. He formerly regarded Santander as "[his] other self, and perhaps [his] better self", but by the time of the events in The General in His Labyrinth Santander has become the General's enemy and has been banished to Paris after his involvement in the assassination attempt. The General is depicted as tormented by the idea that Santander will return from his exile in France; he dreams, for example, that Santander is eating the pages of a book, that he is covered in cockroaches, and that he is plucking out his own eyeballs.
### Field Marshal Antonio José de Sucre
Field Marshal Antonio José de Sucre is portrayed as an intimate friend of the General. The historical Antonio José de Sucre, the Field Marshal of Ayacucho, had been the most trusted general of Simón Bolívar. García Márquez describes him as "intelligent, methodical, shy, and superstitious". The Field Marshal is married to and has a daughter with Doña Mariana Carcelén. In the first chapter of the novel, the General asks Sucre to succeed him as President of the Republic, but he rejects the idea. One of the reasons Sucre gives is that he wishes only to live his life for his family. Also at the beginning of the novel, Sucre's death is foreshadowed. Sucre tells the General that he plans on celebrating the Feast of Saint Anthony in Quito with his family. When the General hears that Sucre has been assassinated in Berruecos on his way back to Quito, he vomits blood.
### Minor characters
The novel revolves around the fictionalized figure of Bolívar and includes many minor characters who are part of the General's travelling party, whom he meets on his journey or who come to him in his memories and dreams of his past. Sometimes they are identified by particular quirks or tied to small but significant events. They include, for instance, General José María Carreño, a member of the entourage, whose right arm was amputated after a combat wound, and who once revealed a military secret by talking in his sleep. At other times, they are prostheses for the General's now failing powers: Fernando, for example, the General's nephew, is "the most willing and patient of the General's many clerks", and the General wakes him "at any hour to have him read aloud from a dull book or take notes on urgent extemporizations". One of the least developed of the minor characters is the General's wife, María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alayza, who had died, readers are told, in mysterious circumstances shortly after their marriage. The General has "buried her at the bottom of a water-tight oblivion as a brutal means of living without her"; she only fleetingly enters his memories in the book's last chapter. According to Menton, she is "upstaged" by Manuela Sáenz, whose later history García Márquez recounts as if she instead were the General's widow. María Teresa's death, however, marked the General's "birth into history", and he has never tried to replace her.
## Major themes
### Politics
In The General in His Labyrinth, García Márquez voices his political views through the character of the General. For example, Alvarez Borland points out that in the scene where the General responds to the French diplomat, his words closely reflect García Márquez's 1982 Nobel Address. The diplomat is critical of the barbarism in Latin America and the brutal means used in attempting to achieve independence. Bolívar replies by pointing out that Europe had centuries to progress to its current state, and that South America should be left to experience its "Middle Ages in peace". Similarly García Márquez remarks in his Nobel Speech that "venerable Europe would perhaps be more perceptive if it tried to see [Latin America] in its own past. If only it recalled that London took three hundred years to build its first city wall ...".
The novel was published in 1989, when the Soviet Union was disintegrating and the political map was being radically redrawn. Reviewing The General in His Labyrinth in 1990, the novelist Margaret Atwood pointed to another instance of García Márquez raising political issues through the character of the General. He has him tell his aide that the United States is "omnipotent and terrible, and that its tale of liberty will end in a plague of miseries for us all". Atwood noted the contemporary relevance of this sentiment, since "the patterns of Latin American politics, and of United States intervention in them, have not changed much in 160 years." She suggested that García Márquez's fictionalization of Bolívar is a lesson "for our own turbulent age ... Revolutions have a long history of eating their progenitors." The central character is a man at the end of his life, who has seen his revolution and dream of a united Latin America fail.
### Figural labyrinth
According to literary critic David Danow, the labyrinth of the novel's title refers to "a series of labyrinths that are contingent upon matters of history, geography, and biography ... that consistently and conclusively result in a dead end"—in this case, the General's own death. His final voyage along the Magdalena River involves a doubling back and forth from one location to another that leads him and his followers nowhere. The labyrinth does not lead to happiness; instead, it results in madness from constant pondering on the past and an impossible future. At the end of his life, the General is reduced to a spectre of his former self. The labyrinth also recalls the labyrinth built to imprison the minotaur in Greek mythology, and the endless travelling and searching of ancient Greek heroes. In Danow's view, "The Labyrinth mirrors the wanderings and travails of the hero in search for meaning and resolution to the vicissitudes of life".
García Márquez depicts the General's body itself as a labyrinth. His doctor observes that "everything that enters the body, adds weight, and everything that leaves it is debased." The General's body is described as a "labyrinth coming to a literal dead end". The labyrinth is also expressed in geographical and architectural imagery. The country's destiny is imagined as a break-up, a folding of north into south. The seas offer the hope of a new life and a new world, but the closer the General is to Colombia, the less chance he has of moving on. García Márquez describes buildings as "daunting, reverberating (if not exactly reiterating) with the echoes of a bloody past". The portrayal of the General's world as a labyrinth is underlined by his constant return to cities and towns he has visited before: each location belongs to the past as well as to the present. The General in his Labyrinth blurs the lines between perdition in a man-made world and wandering in the natural world.
### Fate and love
Bolívar's fate is known from the beginning, and García Márquez constantly uses images which foreshadow this ending. For instance, a clock stuck at seven minutes past one, the exact time of the General's death, appears repeatedly in the novel. This sense of fate is introduced in the epigraph, which comes from a letter written by the historical Bolívar to General Santander on August 4, 1823: "It seems that the devil controls the business of my life." As Palencia-Roth points out, the word used for devil here is demonio rather than the more familiar diablo. Demonio derives from the Greek word daimon, which can equally mean divine power, fate, or destiny. Accordingly, the General succumbs to his fate and accepts his death as destiny.
The theme of love is central to the novel. Bolívar had a reputation as a womanizer, and books have been written on his philandering; but as depicted in this novel, during the last seven months of his life, the General could no longer engage in the activities that had fueled that reputation. García Márquez mentions a woman every few pages, many of whom are his own invention, exploring love through the General's memories. Palencia-Roth notes that the presence of these women "allows a labyrinthine exploration of his life before his final journey" and suggests that García Márquez uses love as a barometer of the General's heart and health. Although Bolívar is usually thought to have died from tuberculosis, Palencia-Roth believes that for the author, the General dies from the lack of love. "Despised by many of his countrymen, abandoned by all but a few aides and associates, left—during the final seven months of his life—without even the companionship of his longtime mistress Manuela Saenz, Bolívar had no choice but to die of a broken heart."
### Numbers and religious symbols
Numbers are an important symbolic aspect of the novel. The book is divided into eight chapters, almost all of equal length, which represent the eight-year love affair between the General and Manuela Sáenz. The General's last hours are marked by an octagonal clock. Allusions to the number three are even more common in the novel. As García Márquez scholar Isabel Rodríguez Vergara notes, the number three—the Trinity which occupies a vital place in the symbology of the Catholic Mass—is repeated 21 times throughout the book. She quotes Mircea Eliade: "In the novel it represents a symbolic sacrifice aimed at redeeming humankind—that of Bolívar, a misunderstood redeemer sacrificed by his own people."
Rodríguez Vergara observes that the General is like a supernatural being, simultaneously dying and being surrounded by symbolic circumstances such as rain, fiestas, and the plague. The novel begins with Bolívar immersed in purifying waters, in a state of ecstasy and meditation that suggests a priestly ritual. One of the women with whom the General sleeps, Queen Marie Louise, is described as a virgin with the profile of an idol—an allusion to the Virgin Mary. The General rides a mule into the last towns on his journey towards death, echoing Christ's entry into Jerusalem. He dies of mysterious and unknown causes, and the people burn his belongings in fear of catching his illness. In Rodríguez Vergara's view, "Bolívar was sacrificed as a scapegoat to purge the guilt of the community."
René Girard has interpreted the recurrence of rain in the novel as one of the purifying rituals the community must undergo in order to wash away the contagion of violence. The fiestas may represent another ritual of purification and also symbolize war. Fiestas are held to honour the General when he arrives at a town, but at other times, political demonstrations against the General are mistaken for a fiesta. According to Rodríguez Vergara, this shows how "information is manipulated" and "depicts an atmosphere where fiesta and war are synonymous".
### Melancholy and mourning
Latin American cultural theorist Carlos J. Alonso, drawing on Freudian theory, argues that the novel is essentially a therapeutic device, designed to help move Latin America past its problematic experience of modernity. He compares this to the way the healing state of mourning replaces grief in the process of recovering from a death. Both activities are mechanisms for dealing with loss. Alonso believes that The General in his Labyrinth, by almost entirely centering the novel on the General's death, forces the reader to confront the horror of this process. In Alonso's view, the reader is meant to pass from "a melancholy relationship vis-a-vis the figure of Bolívar to a relationship that has the therapeutic qualities of mourning instead".
Latin America's history and culture, Alonso suggests, began with the loss of Bolívar's dream of a united continent and as a result has developed under a melancholy shadow ever since. Thus, by forcing the reader to return to the origin of modernity in Latin America and confront its death in the most horrific way, García Márquez compels the reader to move from melancholy to mourning, "so that the phantom of the lost object of modernity may cease to rule the libidinal economy of Spanish American cultural discourse and historical life".
### Challenging history
García Márquez comments on the nature of historical fact by drawing attention to the way history is written. The novel recreates a time in Bolívar's life that has no historical precedent, as there is no record of the last 14 days of his life. In García Márquez's account readers observe Bolívar intimately, seeing his human qualities. In the view of critic Isabel Alvarez Borland, by choosing to fictionalize a national hero in this way, García Márquez is challenging the claim of official history to represent the truth. In the "My Thanks" section of the novel, García Márquez asserts ironically that what he is writing is more historical than fictional, and he discusses his own historical methodology in detail. By posing in the role of a historian, he challenges the reliability of written history from within the writing process. According to Alvarez Borland, this serves to "remind us that a claim to truth is not the property of any text; rather it is the result of how a historian (as a reader) interprets the facts".
The General in His Labyrinth also confronts the methods of official historians by using an oral style of narration. The narration can be considered an oral account in that it is woven from the verbal interactions of everyday people. Alvarez Borland explains that the advantage of this technique, as discussed by Walter Ong, is that "the orality of any given culture, residing in the unwritten tales of its peoples, possesses a spontaneity and liveliness which is lost once this culture commits its tales to writing." The oral style of narration therefore provides a truthfulness which official history lacks. Alvarez Borland concludes that The General in His Labyrinth suggests new ways of writing the past; it takes account of voices that were never written down as part of official history.
The historian Ben Hughes commented on the novel: "The Liberator's British confidants, including Daniel O'Leary, were amongst the closest figures to the general in this period. Nevertheless, they are ignored in the novel. Instead, Márquez uses the character of a fictional Colombian servant, José Palacios, as The Liberator's final sounding board, thereby neatly sidestepping the more complex reality." In Hughes's view, modern South American literature has played a role in cleansing the national memory of British soldiers' assistance to The Liberator.
## Comparisons with other García Márquez novels
In an interview published in the Colombian weekly Revista Semana on March 20, 1989, García Márquez told María Elvira Samper, "At bottom, I have written only one book, the same one that circles round and round, and continues on." Palencia-Roth suggests that this novel is a "labyrinthine summation ... of García Márquez's long-standing obsessions and ever-present topics: love, death, solitude, power, fate".
Like the Patriarch in García Márquez's The Autumn of the Patriarch, Bolívar was an absolute dictator. The Patriarch is never identified by name; Bolívar, too, is identified chiefly by his title. Bolívar also invites comparison with Colonel Aureliano Buendía in One Hundred Years of Solitude: both characters believe the wars they have waged have been fruitless and overwhelming, and both face numerous attempts on their lives, but eventually die of natural causes. In his belief that life is controlled by fate, the General resembles Buendía in One Hundred Years of Solitude and Santiago Nasar in Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
Palencia-Roth notes that critics have been struck by the humorless elegiac style of The General in His Labyrinth; its dark mood and somber message is similar to that of The Autumn of the Patriarch. Love is a theme common to both Love in the Time of Cholera and The General in His Labyrinth, but the latter is considered a tragedy. These two novels have been used to demonstrate the range of García Márquez's work.
Isabel Alvarez Borland, in her essay "The Task of the Historian in El general en su laberinto", claims that " ... while El general en su laberinto is in many ways a continuation of García Márquez's criticism of Latin America's official history seen in his earlier works, the novel contrasts sharply with his previous fictions". In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, according to Alvarez Borland, the narrator challenges the truth of official language. However, The General in His Labyrinth "differs from these [earlier works] in employing narrative strategies which seek to answer in a much more overt and didactic fashion questions that the novel poses about history".
In a summary of Edward Hood's book La ficcion de Gabriel García Márquez: Repetición e intertextualidad, García Márquez is characterized as an author who uses repetition and autointertextualidad (intertextuality between the works of a single author) extensively in his fiction, including in The General in His Labyrinth. Hood points out some obvious examples of repetition in García Márquez's works: the themes of solitude in One Hundred Years of Solitude, tyranny in Autumn of the Patriarch, and the desire for a unified continent expressed by Bolívar in The General in His Labyrinth. An example of intertextuality can be seen in the repetition of patterns between books. For example, both Jose Arcadio Buendia in One Hundred Years of Solitude and Bolívar in The General in his Labyrinth experience labyrinthian dreams.
## Genre
Critics consider García Márquez's book in terms of the historical novel, but differ over whether the label is appropriate. In his review of The General in his Labyrinth, Selden Rodman hesitated to call it a novel, since it was so heavily researched, giving Bolívar's views "on everything from life and love to his chronic constipation and dislike of tobacco smoke". On the other hand, reviewer Robert Adams suggested that García Márquez had "improved on history". According to critic Donald L. Shaw, The General in His Labyrinth is a "New Historical Novel", a genre that he argues crosses between Boom, Post-Boom, and Postmodernist fiction in Latin American literature: "New Historical Novels tend either to retell historical events from an unconventional perspective, but one which preserves their intelligibility, or to question the very possibility of making sense of the past at all." Shaw believes that this novel belongs to the first category. García Márquez is presenting both a historical account and his own interpretation of events.
David Bushnell, writing in The Hispanic American Historical Review, points out that the work is less a pure historical account than others suggest. García Márquez's Bolívar is a man "who wanders naked through the house, suffers constipation, uses foul language, and much more besides." He argues that documentation does not support many of these details. Bushnell suggests, however, that the fact that the novel is not entirely historically accurate does not necessarily distinguish it from the work of professional historians. The main difference, Bushnell believes, is that García Márquez's work "is far more readable" than a pure history.
## Reception
The General in His Labyrinth was relatively poorly received by the general public in the United States, despite the praise of critics. Critic Ilan Stavans, who himself praised the book as "one of the writer's most sophisticated and accomplished", attributes this to the novel's time period and to its profusion of historical information, neither of which proved attractive to English-speaking readers. Isabel Alvarez Borland notes that, like Stavans, "critics in the United States have largely celebrated García Márquez's portrait of this national hero and considered it a tour de force"; but she also observes that in Latin America the book received more mixed reviews, ranging from "outrage to unqualified praise".
The novel generated huge controversy in Latin America: some Venezuelan and Colombian politicians described its depiction of Bolívar as "profane". According to Stavans, they accused García Márquez of "defaming the larger-than-life reputation of a historical figure who, during the nineteenth century, struggled to unite the vast Hispanic world". The novel's publication provoked outrage from many Latin American politicians and intellectuals because its portrayal of the General is not the saintly image long cherished by many. Mexico's ambassador to Austria, Francisco Cuevas Cancino, wrote a damning letter, which was widely publicized in Mexico City, objecting to the portrayal of Bolívar. He stated: "The novel is plagued with errors of fact, conception, fairness, understanding of the [historical] moment and ignorance of its consequences ... It has served the enemies of [Latin] America, who care only that they can now denigrate Bolívar, and with him all of us." Even the novel's admirers, such as the leading Venezuelan diplomat and writer Arturo Uslar Pietri, worried that some facts were stretched. García Márquez believes, however, that Latin America has to discover the General's labyrinth to recognize and deal with its own maze of problems.
More positively, Nelson Bocaranda, a Venezuelan TV commentator, considers the novel to be a tonic for Latin American culture: "people here saw a Bolívar who is a man of flesh and bones just like themselves". Mexican author Carlos Fuentes agrees with Bocaranda saying: "What comes across beautifully and poignantly in this book is a man dealing with the unknown [world of democratic ideas]". García Márquez realistically portrays a ridiculous figure trapped in a labyrinth, magnifying the General's defects, and presenting an image of Bolívar contrary to that instilled in classrooms. However, the novel also depicts Bolívar as an idealist and political theorist who predicted many problems that would obstruct Latin American advancement in the future. García Márquez depicts a figure who was aware of the racial and social friction in Latin American society, feared debt, and warned against economic irresponsibility. He has the General warn his aide-de-camp, Agustín de Iturbide, against the future interference of the United States in the internal affairs of Latin America.
Novelist and critic Bárbara Mujica comments that the book's English translator, Edith Grossman, fully captures the multiple levels of meaning of the text, as well as García Márquez's modulations in tone. García Márquez himself has admitted that he prefers his novels in their English translations.
## Publication history
The original Spanish version of The General in His Labyrinth was published simultaneously in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Spain in 1989. The first American edition was listed as a best seller in The New York Times the following year.
The novel has been translated into many languages since its first publication in Spanish, as detailed by Sfeir de González in 2003.
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667,925 |
Coldrum Long Barrow
| 1,162,517,453 |
Neolithic chambered long barrow near Trottiscliffe, Kent, England
|
[
"Archaeological sites in Kent",
"Barrows in the United Kingdom",
"Buildings and structures in Kent",
"History of Kent",
"Megalithic monuments in England",
"National Trust properties in Kent",
"Neo-druidism in Britain",
"Religion in Kent",
"Stone Age sites in Kent",
"Tonbridge and Malling"
] |
The Coldrum Long Barrow, also known as the Coldrum Stones and the Adscombe Stones, is a chambered long barrow located near the village of Trottiscliffe in the south-eastern English county of Kent. Probably constructed in the fourth millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, today it survives only in a state of ruin.
Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Part of an architectural tradition of long barrow building that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, the Coldrum Stones belong to a localised regional variant of barrows produced in the vicinity of the River Medway, now known as the Medway Megaliths. Of these, it is in the best surviving condition. It lies near to both Addington Long Barrow and Chestnuts Long Barrow on the western side of the river. Two further surviving long barrows, Kit's Coty House and Little Kit's Coty House, as well as possible survivals such as the Coffin Stone and White Horse Stone, are located on the Medway's eastern side.
Built out of earth and around fifty local sarsen-stone megaliths, the long barrow consisted of a sub-rectangular earthen tumulus enclosed by kerb-stones. Within the eastern end of the tumulus was a stone chamber, into which human remains were deposited on at least two separate occasions during the Early Neolithic. Osteoarchaeological analysis of these remains has shown them to be those of at least seventeen individuals, a mixture of men, women, and children. At least one of the bodies had been dismembered before burial, potentially reflecting a funerary tradition of excarnation and secondary burial. As with other barrows, Coldrum has been interpreted as a tomb to house the remains of the dead, perhaps as part of a belief system involving ancestor veneration, although archaeologists have suggested that it may also have had further religious, ritual, and cultural connotations and uses.
After the Early Neolithic, the long barrow fell into a state of ruined dilapidation, perhaps experiencing deliberate destruction in the Late Medieval period, either by Christian iconoclasts or treasure hunters. In local folklore, the site became associated with the burial of a prince and the countless stones motif. The ruin attracted the interest of antiquarians in the 19th century, while archaeological excavation took place in the early 20th. In 1926, ownership was transferred to heritage charity The National Trust. Open without charge to visitors all year around, the stones are the site of a rag tree, a May Day morris dance, and various modern Pagan rituals.
## Name and location
The Coldrum Stones are named after a nearby farm, Coldrum Lodge, which has since been demolished. The monument lies in a "rather isolated site" north-east of the nearby village of Trottiscliffe, in the south-eastern English county of Kent. The site is also positioned about 500 metres (550 yards) from a prehistoric track known as the Pilgrims' Way. The tomb can be reached along a pathway known as Coldrum Lane, which is accessible only on foot. The nearest car park to Coldrum Lane can be found off Pinesfield Lane in Trottiscliffe. The village of Addington is located 2.012 kilometres (1 mi 440 yd) away.
## Context
The Early Neolithic was a revolutionary period of British history. Between 4500 and 3800 BCE, it saw a widespread change in lifestyle as the communities living in the British Isles adopted agriculture as their primary form of subsistence, abandoning the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that had characterised the preceding Mesolithic period. This came about through contact with continental European societies; it is unclear to what extent this can be attributed to an influx of migrants or to indigenous Mesolithic Britons adopting agricultural technologies from the continent. The region of modern Kent would have been key for the arrival of continental European settlers and visitors, because of its position on the estuary of the River Thames and its proximity to the continent.
Britain was then largely forested; widespread forest clearance did not occur in Kent until the Late Bronze Age (c.1000 to 700 BCE). Environmental data from the vicinity of the White Horse Stone, a putatively prehistoric monolith near the River Medway, supports the idea that the area was still largely forested in the Early Neolithic, covered by a woodland of oak, ash, hazel/alder and amygdaloideae. Throughout most of Britain, there is little evidence of cereal or permanent dwellings from this period, leading archaeologists to believe that the island's Early Neolithic economy was largely pastoral, relying on herding cattle, with people living a nomadic or semi-nomadic life.
### Medway Megaliths
Across Western Europe, the Early Neolithic marked the first period in which humans built monumental structures in the landscape. These structures included chambered long barrows, rectangular or oval earthen tumuli which had a chamber built into one end. Some of these chambers were constructed out of timber, while others were built using large stones, now known as "megaliths". These long barrows often served as tombs, housing the physical remains of the dead within their chamber. Individuals were rarely buried alone in the Early Neolithic, instead being interred in collective burials with other members of their community. These chambered tombs were built all along the Western European seaboard during the Early Neolithic, from southeastern Spain up to southern Sweden, taking in most of the British Isles; the architectural tradition was introduced to Britain from continental Europe in the first half of the fourth millennium BCE. Although there are stone buildings—like Göbekli Tepe in modern Turkey—which predate them, the chambered long barrows constitute humanity's first widespread tradition of construction using stone.
Although now all in a ruinous state and not retaining their original appearance, at the time of construction the Medway Megaliths would have been some of the largest and most visually imposing Early Neolithic funerary monuments in Britain. Grouped along the River Medway as it cuts through the North Downs, they constitute the most southeasterly group of megalithic monuments in the British Isles, and the only megalithic group in eastern England. The archaeologists Brian Philp and Mike Dutto deemed the Medway Megaliths to be "some of the most interesting and well known" archaeological sites in Kent, while the archaeologist Paul Ashbee described them as "the most grandiose and impressive structures of their kind in southern England".
The Medway Megaliths can be divided into two separate clusters: one to the west of the River Medway and the other on Blue Bell Hill to the east, with the distance between the two clusters measuring at between 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) and 10 kilometres (6.2 mi). The western group includes Coldrum Long Barrow, Addington Long Barrow, and the Chestnuts Long Barrow. The eastern group consists of Smythe's Megalith, Kit's Coty House, and Little Kit's Coty House, while various stones on the eastern side of the river, most notably the Coffin Stone and White Horse Stone, may also have been parts of such structures. It is not known if they were all built at the same time, or whether they were constructed in succession, while similarly it is not known if they each served the same function or whether there was a hierarchy in their usage.
The Medway long barrows all conformed to the same general design plan, and are all aligned on an east to west axis. Each had a stone chamber at the eastern end of the mound, and they each probably had a stone facade flanking the entrance. They had internal heights of up to 3.0 metres (10 feet), making them taller than most other chambered long barrows in Britain. The chambers were constructed from sarsen, a dense, hard, and durable stone that occurs naturally throughout Kent, having formed out of sand from the Eocene epoch. Early Neolithic builders would have selected blocks from the local area, and then transported them to the site of the monument to be erected.
These common architectural features among the Medway Megaliths indicate a strong regional cohesion with no direct parallels elsewhere in the British Isles. Nevertheless, as with other regional groupings of Early Neolithic long barrows—such as the Cotswold-Severn group in south-western Britain—there are also various idiosyncrasies in the different monuments, such as Coldrum's rectilinear shape, the Chestnut Long Barrow's facade, and the long, thin mounds at Addington and Kit's Coty. These variations might have been caused by the tombs being altered and adapted over the course of their use; in this scenario, the monuments would be composite structures.
The people who built these monuments were probably influenced by pre-existing tomb-shrines that they were already aware of. Whether those people had grown up locally, or moved into the Medway area from elsewhere is not known. Based on a stylistic analysis of their architectural designs, the archaeologist Stuart Piggott thought that the plan behind the Medway Megaliths had originated in the area around the Low Countries, while fellow archaeologist Glyn Daniel instead believed that the same evidence showed an influence from Scandinavia. John H. Evans instead suggested an origin in Germany, and Ronald F. Jessup thought that their origins could be seen in the Cotswold-Severn megalithic group. Ashbee noted that their close clustering in the same area was reminiscent of the megalithic tomb-shrine traditions of continental Northern Europe, and emphasised that the Medway Megaliths were a regional manifestation of a tradition widespread across Early Neolithic Europe. He nevertheless stressed that a precise place of origin was "impossible to indicate" with the available evidence.
## Design and construction
The Coldrum Long Barrow originally consisted of a sarsen stone chamber, covered by a low earthen mound, which was bounded by prostrate slabs. As such, Ashbee asserted that the monument could be divided into three particular features: the chamber, the barrow, and the sarsen stone surround. It had been built using about 50 stones. The barrow is sub-rectangular in plan, and about 20 metres (66 ft) in length. At its broader, eastern end, where the chamber is located, the monument measures 15 metres (50 ft), while at the narrower, western end, it is 12 metres (40 ft) in breadth. As such, the barrow is a "truncated wedge-shape".
The megalithic builders responsible for the Coldrum Stones positioned it on the top of a small ridge adjacent to the North Downs, and constructed it facing eastward, towards the River Medway. It is located on the edge of a large lynchet scarp, although it is difficult to ascertain what views would have been possible from the monument at the time of construction, due to a lack of information on how densely forested the vicinity was. If the area was not highly wooded, then 360° views of the surrounding landscape would have been possible. The monument's axis points toward both the North Downs and the Medway Valley, which is similar to the other Medway Megaliths. The archaeologist Sian Killick suggested that the Coldrum Long Barrow might have been built within view of a nearby settlement, and that this "may have been a key factor in the experience of ceremonies and rituals taking place at the tombs and may also have defined a link between the tomb builders and the landscape."
Coldrum Long Barrow is comparatively isolated from the other Medway Megaliths; in this it is unique, given that the other surviving examples are clustered into two groups. It is possible that another chambered tomb was located nearby; a razed, elongated earthen mound with an east–west orientation is located in a hollow at the foot of the downs just under a quarter of a mile north of the Coldrum Stones. It may be that this represents the remnants of another such monument which has had its stones removed or buried. Several large sarsens south of the Coldrums might represent the remnants of a further such tomb, since destroyed.
### The chamber
The inner chamber measures 4.0 metres (13 ft) in length, and 1.68 metres (5 ft 6 in) in width, although it was potentially much larger when originally constructed. The chamber's internal height would have been at least 1.98 metres (6 ft 6 in). In its current state, the northern side of the chamber is made up of two slabs. One is 2.4 metres (8 ft) long, 2.29 metres (7 ft 6 in) deep, and 0.53 metres (1 ft 9 in) thick; the other is 1.5 metres (5 ft) long, nearly 1.8 metres (6 ft) deep, and 0.61 metres (2 ft) thick. Conversely, the chamber's southern side consists of a single slab, measuring 3.45 metres (11 ft 4 in) in length, 2.21 metres (7 ft 3 in) in depth, and 0.53 metres (1 ft 9 in) in thickness at its eastern end.
The western end of the chamber is closed off with a slab measuring about 1.37 metres (4 ft 6 in) wide, with a thickness of 0.30 metres (1 ft) and a depth of around 2.4 metres (8 ft). A collapsed, broken slab lies at the chamber's opening, eastern end. It is also possible that a largely rectangular slab at the bottom of the slope had once been part of the chamber's eastern end. Excavation has revealed that flint masonry was used to pack around the chamber and support its sarsens; 20th-century renovation has seen this largely replaced with cement, allowing the stones to continue standing upright.
It is possible that there was a facade in front of the chamber, as is evident at other chambered tombs in Britain, such as West Kennet Long Barrow and Wayland's Smithy. It is also possible that there was a portal stone atop the chamber, as was apparent at Kit's Coty House and Lower Kit's Coty House. Many of the larger slabs of stone that have fallen down the slope on the eastern end of the monument may have been parts of this facade or portal.
### The mound and kerb-stones
The earthen mound that once covered the tomb is now visible only as an undulation approximately 0.46 metres (1 ft 6 in) in height. In the 19th century, the mound was higher on the western end of the tomb, although during the 1920s this was removed by excavation to reveal the sarsens beneath. It is probable that in the Early Neolithic, the mound had a quarry ditch surrounding it, and it is inside this ditch that the kerb-stones now sit.
The kerb-stones around the tomb display some patterning; those on the northern side are mostly rectilinear, while those on the southern side are smaller and largely irregular in shape. It is probable that there was an ancillary dry-stone wall constructed using blocks of ironstone from the geological Folkestone beds, as is evident at Chestnuts Long Barrow. Given that such blocks of stone rarely occur naturally, it may have been quarried.
A concave line of abrasion and polishing can be found both on one of the central kerb-stones on the western end of the monument and on a kerb-stone on the south-east of the monument. These have been attributed to the sharpening of flint and other stone axe-blades on these sarsens. It is possible that these tools were sharpened for use in cutting and carving the timber levers and struts which would have been used in erecting the stones and constructing the tomb. Similar evidence for the sharpening of tools has been found at West Kennet Long Barrow, as well as later prehistoric monuments such as Stonehenge.
### Meaning and purpose
Britain's Early Neolithic communities placed greater emphasis on the ritual burial of the dead than their Mesolithic forebears. Archaeologists have suggested that this is because Early Neolithic Britons adhered to an ancestor cult that venerated the spirits of the dead, believing that they could intercede with the forces of nature for the benefit of their living descendants. The archaeologist Robin Holgate stressed that rather than simply being tombs, the Medway Megaliths were "communal monuments fulfilling a social function for the communities who built and used them". Thus, it has been suggested that Early Neolithic people entered into the tombs—which doubled as temples or shrines—to perform rituals honouring the dead and requesting their assistance. For this reason, the historian Ronald Hutton termed these monuments "tomb-shrines" to reflect their dual purpose.
In Britain, these tombs were typically located on prominent hills and slopes overlooking the landscape, perhaps at the junction between different territories. The archaeologist Caroline Malone noted that the tombs would have served as one of various landscape markers that conveyed information on "territory, political allegiance, ownership, and ancestors". Many archaeologists have subscribed to the idea that these tomb-shrines were territorial markers between different tribes; others have argued that such markers would be of little use to a nomadic herding society. Instead it has been suggested that they represent markers along herding pathways. The archaeologist Richard Bradley suggested that the construction of these monuments reflects an attempt to mark control and ownership over the land, thus reflecting a change in mindset brought about by the transition from the hunter-gatherer Mesolithic to the pastoralist Early Neolithic. Others have suggested that these monuments were built on sites already deemed sacred by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.
## Human remains
Within the chamber were placed human remains, which have been discovered and removed at intervals during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Early twentieth century excavation found two separate deposits of bone, each buried atop a stone slab, one higher than the other. Also buried within the chamber were flint tools and small quantities of pottery.
### Demographics
Ashbee suggested that—taking into account both its size and comparisons with other long barrows, such as Fussell's Lodge—the Coldrum tomb could have housed the remains of over a hundred individuals. Excavations conducted in the early 20th century have led to the methodical discovery and removal of what was believed to be the remains of twenty-two humans. These remains were examined by Sir Arthur Keith, the conservator of the museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. He published his results in 1913, in a paper largely concerned with discerning racial characteristics of the bodies. He ended his paper with the conclusion that "the people of pre-Christian Kent were physically not very different from the Kentish man of the Christian period".
In the early 21st century, these bones were re-analysed by a team led by the forensic taphonomist Michael Wysocki, the results of which were published in 2013. Wysocki's team conducted "osteological analysis, Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates, and carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis" in order to discover more about the "demography, burial practices, diet and subsistence, and chronology of the Coldrum population". Disputing earlier conclusions, their report stated that the minimum number of individuals was seventeen. These were identified as probably belonging to nine adults (probably five males and four females), two sub-adults (probably 16 to 20 years old), four older children, and two younger children (one around five years old, the other between 24 and 30 months old).
Keith believed that the crania he examined displayed similar features to one another, suggesting that this meant that they all belonged to "one family—or several families united by common descent." Similar observations have been made regarding the crania from other long barrows in Britain. The osteoarchaeologists Martin Smith and Megan Brickley cautioned that this did not necessarily mean that all of the individuals in any given barrow were members of a single family group, for such shared cranial traits would also be consistent with "a population that was still relatively small and scattered", in which most people were interrelated.
Wysocki's team noted that in all but one case, the fracture morphologies of the bones are consistent with dry-bone breakage. Three of the skulls displayed evidence that they had experienced violence; a probable adult female had an unhealed injury on the left frontal bone, an adult of indeterminate sex had an unhealed fracture on the left frontal, and a second adult female had a healed depressed fracture on the right frontal.
Isotope analysis of the remains revealed that while the bones had δ<sup>13</sup>C values that were typical of those found at many other southern British Neolithic sites, they had significantly higher values of δ<sup>15</sup>N, which grew over time. Although this data is difficult to interpret, the investigative team believed that it probably reflected that these individuals had had a terrestrial diet high in animal protein that over time was increasingly supplemented with freshwater river or estuarine foods. In the case of the older individuals whose remains were interred in the tomb, the tooth enamel was worn away and the dentine had become exposed on the chewing area of the crowns.
Radiocarbon dating of the human remains suggested that some were brought to the site between either 3980–3800 calibrated BCE (95% probability) or 3960–3880 cal BCE (68% probability). It further suggested that after an interval of either 60–350 years (95% probability) or 140–290 years (68% probability), additional depositions of human remains were made inside the tomb. This second phase probably began in 3730–3540 cal BCE (95% probability) or 3670–3560 cal BCE (68% probability). The radiocarbon dating of the human remains does not necessarily provide a date for the construction of Coldrum Long Barrow itself, because it is possible that the individuals died some time either before or after the monument's construction.
### Post-mortem deposition
Cut-marks were identified on some of the bones (two femora, two innominates, and one cranium), with osteoarchaeological specialists suggesting that these had been created post-mortem as the bodies were dismembered and the bones removed from their attached ligaments. They further suggested that the absence of cut-marks on certain bones suggested that the body had already undergone partial decomposition or the removal of soft tissues prior to dismemberment. The precision of the cut-marks suggests that this dismemberment was done carefully; "they do not suggest frenzied hacking or mutilation." None of the criteria that osteoarchaeologists deem diagnostic of cannibalism were found on the bones.
This cut-marked human bone assemblage represented the largest yet identified from within a Neolithic long barrow in southern Britain, although similar evidence for dismemberment has been found from other Neolithic British sites, such as West Trump, Eyford, Aldestrop, and Haddenham. There are two possibilities for how this material developed. The first is that the bodies of the dead were excarnated or exposed to the elements, followed by a secondary burial within the tomb. The second is that they were placed in the tomb, where the flesh decomposed, before the bodies were then rearranged within the tomb itself. These practices may have been accompanied by other ritualistic or ceremonial practices, direct evidence for which does not survive.
The inclusion of occupational debris like ceramic sherds over the bones was not unique to the site but common in chambered tombs from southern England. On the basis of an example discovered at Kit's Coty House, Ashbee thought it apparent that the contents of the Coldrum's chamber would have been compartmentalised by medial slabs, which served the same purpose as the side chambers of West Kennet and Wayland's Smithy.
## Damage and dilapidation
All the surviving megalithic tombs from the Early Neolithic period have suffered from neglect and the ravages of agriculture. Ashbee noted that the Coldrum Stones represent "Kent's least damaged megalithic long barrow", however it too has suffered considerable damage, having become dilapidated and fallen apart over the six millennia since its original construction. Most prominently, the eastern side has largely collapsed, with the stones that once helped to hold up the side of the barrow having fallen to the bottom of the slope. Conversely, it is possible that the sarsens at the bottom of the slope were not part of the original monument, but were stones found in nearby fields which were deposited there by farmers.
Excavation of Chestnuts Long Barrow revealed that it had been systematically destroyed in one event, and Ashbee suggested that the same may have happened to the Coldrum Stones. He believed that the kerb-stones around the barrow were toppled, laid prostrate in the surrounding ditch, and then buried during the late 13th or early 14th century, by Christians seeking to obliterate non-Christian monuments. Conversely, the archaeologist John Alexander—who excavated Chestnuts in 1957—suggested that the Medway tombs were destroyed by robbers looking for treasure within them. As evidence, he pointed to the Close Roll of 1237, which ordered the opening of tumuli on the Isle of Wight in search for treasure, a practice which may have spread to Kent around the same time. Alexander believed that the destruction in Kent may have been brought about by a special commissioner, highlighting that the "expertness and thoroughness of the robbery" at Chestnuts would have necessitated resources beyond that which a local community could probably muster. Ashbee further suggested that in subsequent centuries, locals raided the damaged Coldrum tomb for loamy chalk and stone, which was then re-used as building material.
## Folklore, folk tradition, and modern Paganism
In a 1946 paper, the folklorist John H. Evans recorded the existence of a local folk belief that a battle was fought at the site of the Coldrum Stones, and that a "Black Prince" was buried within its chamber. He suggested that the tales of battles taking place at this site and at other Medway Megaliths had not developed independently among the local population but had "percolated down from the theories of antiquaries" who believed that the fifth-century Battle of Aylesford, which was recorded in the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, took place in the area.
Evans also recorded a local folk belief applied to all the Medway Megaliths and which had been widespread "up to the last generation"; this was that it was impossible for anyone to successfully count the number of stones in the monuments. This "countless stones" motif is not unique to the Medway region, and can be found at various other megalithic monuments in Britain. The earliest textual evidence for it is found in an early 16th-century document, where it applies to the stone circle of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, although in an early 17th-century document it was applied to The Hurlers, a set of three stone circles in Cornwall. Later records reveal that it had gained widespread distribution in England, as well as a single occurrence each in Wales and Ireland. The folklorist S. P. Menefee suggested that it could be attributed to an animistic understanding that these megaliths had lives of their own.
Several modern Pagan religions are practiced at the Medway Megaliths, with Pagan activity having taken place at the Coldrum Stones from at least the late 1980s. These Pagans commonly associated the sites both with a concept of ancestry and of their being a source of "earth energy". The scholar of religion Ethan Doyle White argued that these sites in particular were interpreted as having connections to the ancestors both because they were created by Neolithic peoples whom modern Pagans view as their "own spiritual ancestors" and because the sites were once chambered tombs, and thus held the remains of the dead, who themselves may have been perceived as ancestors. On this latter point, Pagan perspectives on these sites are shaped by older archaeological interpretations. The Pagans also cited the Megaliths as spots marking sources of "earth energy", often aligned on ley lines, an idea probably derived ultimately from the publications of Earth Mysteries proponents like John Michell.
Pagans sometimes visit the site alone or in pairs, there to meditate, pray, or perform rituals, and some have reported experiencing visions there. A modern Druidic group known as Roharn's Grove hold regular rites at the site, particularly during the eight festivals that make up the Pagan Wheel of the Year. The Coldrums have also witnessed Pagan rites of passage; circa 2000, a handfasting—or Wiccan marriage ceremony—was held there. One member of the Odinic Rite, a Heathen organisation, gave their "oath of profession" to the group at the Coldrum Stones because they felt a particularly positive energy exists there. Politically motivated rituals have also been held at the site. In the late 1990s, the South London branch of the Paganlink organisation held a ritual at the Coldrum Stones in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the construction of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link through the Medway Valley landscape. Another politically motivated Pagan rite was carried out there in the early 2010s by The Warrior's Call, a group seeking to prevent fracking in the United Kingdom by invoking "the traditional spirits of Albion" against it.
In the early 21st century, a tradition developed in which the Hartley Morris Men, a morris dancing side, meet at the site at dawn every May Day in order to "sing up the sun". This consists of dances performed within the stones on top of the barrow, followed by a song performed at the base of the monument. The trees overhanging the Coldrum Stones on its northern side have become rag trees, with hundreds of ribbons in various colours having been tied to their branches. This is a folk custom that some Pagans engage in, although it is also carried out by many other individuals; one Pagan has been recorded as saying that she tied a ribbon to the tree with her young son, both to make a wish for an improved future and as an offering to the "spirit of place". As of early 2014, runic carvings written in the Elder Futhark alphabet were also evident on the trunks of these trees, spelling the names of the Norse gods Thor and Odin; these had probably been carved by Heathens, members of a religious movement that worships these deities.
## Antiquarian and archaeological investigation
### Early antiquarian descriptions
The earliest antiquarian accounts of Coldrum Long Barrow were never published. There are claims that at the start of the 19th century, the Reverend Mark Noble, Rector of Barming, prepared a plan of the site for Gentleman's Magazine, although no copies have been produced to verify this. Between 1842 and 1844, the Reverend Beale Poste authored Druidical Remains at Coldrum, in which he described the monument. This remained unpublished at the time. Associating the site with the druids of Britain's Iron Age, Poste's suggestion was that the name "Coldrum" derived from the linguistically Celtic "Gael-Dun", and that Belgic chiefs were interred there. He further reported that in both 1804 and 1825, skulls had been found at the site. In 1844, an antiquarian named Thomas Wright published a note on the Coldrum Stones and other Medway Megaliths in The Archaeological Journal. Wright had been alerted to their existence by a local vicar, the Reverend Lambert B. Larking, and proceeded to visit them with him. Describing the Coldrums, Wright mentioned "a smaller circle of stones" to the others in the area, with "a subterranean cromlech in the middle". He further added that "it is a tradition of the peasantry that a continuous line of stones ran from Coldrum direct to the well-known monument called Kit's Cotty [sic] House", attributing this belief to various megaliths scattered throughout the landscape.
In 1857, the antiquarian J. M. Kemble excavated at the site with the help of the Reverend Larking, providing a report of their findings to the Central Committee of the British Archaeological Association. Describing the monument as a stone circle, they asserted that they discovered Anglo-Saxon pottery at the site, and noted that as well as being called the Coldrum Stones, the monument also had the name of the Adscombe Stones, which Kemble believed originated with the Old English word for funeral pile, ad. In August 1863, members of the Archaeological Institute—which was holding its week-long meeting in Rochester—visited the site, guided by the antiquary Charles Roach Smith. That year, the monument was described in a copy of Gentleman's Magazine by Yorkshire antiquary Charles Moore Jessop, who believed it to be a "Celtic" stone circle.
In 1869, the antiquarian A. L. Lewis first visited the site, and was informed by locals that several years previously a skull had been uncovered from inside or near to the chamber, but that they believed it to be that of a gypsy. A later account elaborated on this, stating that two individuals who excavated in the centre of the chamber without permission discovered a human skeleton, the skull of which was re-buried in the churchyard at Meopham. In an 1878 note published in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Lewis noted that while many tourists visited Kit's Coty House, "very few goes to or ever hears of a yet more curious collection of stones at Colderham or Coldrum Lodge". He believed that the monument consisted of both a "chamber" and an "oval" of stones, suggesting that they were "two distinct erections". In 1880, the archaeologist Flinders Petrie included the existence of the stones at "Coldreham" in his list of Kentish earthworks; although noting that a previous commentator had described the stones as being in the shape of an oval, he instead described them as forming "a rectilinear enclosure" around the chamber. He then included a small, basic plan of the monument.
In August 1889, two amateur archaeologists, George Payne and A. A. Arnold, came across the monument, which they noted was known among locals as the "Coldrum Stones" and "Druid Temple"; according to Payne, "the huge stones were so overgrown with brambles and brushwood that they could not be discerned". He returned the next year, noting that the brushwood had since been cut away to reveal the megaliths. In his 1893 book Collectanea Cantiana, Payne noted that although it had first been described in print in 1844, "since that time no one seems to have taken the trouble to properly record them or make a plan", an unusual claim given that a copy of Petrie's published plan existed in his library. For this reason, after gaining permission from the landowner, he convinced Major A. O. Green, Instructor in Survey at Brompton, to conduct a survey of the monument in August 1892. He also wrote to the archaeologist Augustus Pitt-Rivers, encouraging him to schedule the Coldrum Stones as a legally protected site under the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882. Payne described the Coldrum Stones as "the finest monument of its class in the county, and one worthy of every care and attention." Comparing it to other monuments of its type in Britain, he stated that it was undoubtedly "of sepulchral origin, belonging to a period anterior to the Roman domination of Britain." Payne also noted a folk tradition that there were stone avenues connecting Coldrum to the Addington Long Barrow, but added that he was unable to discover any physical evidence of this feature.
In 1904, George Clinch published a note on the Medway Megaliths in the Royal Anthropological Institute's journal, Man, in which he referred to the Coldrum Stones as "at once the most remarkable and the least known of the whole series." Suggesting that its design indicates that it was built during "a late date in the neolithic age", he compared the workmanship in producing the megaliths to that at Stonehenge, although noted that they differed in that the Coldrum Stones clearly represented "a sepulchral pile". Ultimately, he ended his note by urging for the site to be protected under the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1900. In that same issue, Lewis included an added note in which he rejected the idea that the monument had once been covered by an earthen tumulus because he could see "no evidence that anything of that kind ever existed", and instead he interpreted the site as a stone circle, comparing it to the examples at Avebury, Arbor Low, and Stanton Drew, suggesting that the central chamber was a shrine.
### Archaeological excavation
The Coldrum Stones have been excavated on multiple occasions. On 16 April 1910, the amateur archaeologist F. J. Bennett began excavation at the site, having previously uncovered Neolithic stone tools from Addington Long Barrow. He soon discovered human bones "under only a few inches of chalky soil" at Coldrum. He returned to the site for further excavation in August 1910, this time with his niece and her husband, both of whom were dentists with an interest in craniology; on that day they discovered pieces of a human skull, which they were able to largely reconstruct. A few days later he returned to excavate on the north-west corner of the chamber with the architect E. W. Filkins; that day, they found a second skull, further bones, a flint tool, and pieces of pottery. This pottery was later identified as being Anglo-Saxon in date.
Later that month, George Payne and F. W. Reader met with Bennett to discuss his finds. With the aid of two other interested amateur archaeologists, Mr Boyd and Miss Harker, both from Malling, excavation resumed in early September. In 2009, the archaeologists Martin Smith and Megan Brickley noted that Bennett's excavations had taken heed of Pitt-Rivers's advice that excavations should be recorded in full. They noted that Bennett had provided "clear plan and section drawings, photographs of the monument and careful attempts to consider site formation processes." Suggesting that the monument was constructed on agricultural land, in his published report Bennett cited the ideas of anthropologist James Frazer in The Golden Bough in proposing that the Coldrum Stones "may at one time have been dedicated, though not necessarily initially so, to the worship of the corn god and of agriculture." He believed that the human remains found at the site were the victims of human sacrifice killed in fertility rites; conversely, Evans later stated that "we have no means of knowing" whether human sacrifice had taken place at the site.
In September 1922, Filkins again excavated at Coldrum, this time with the aid of Gravesend resident Charles Gilbert. Their project was financed through grants provided by the British Association and the Society of Antiquaries, with Filkins noting that at the time of its commencement, "a miniature jungle" had grown up around the site which had to be cleared. Excavation continued sporadically until at least 1926. Human remains were discovered, and placed into the possession of Sir Arthur Keith of the Royal College of Surgeons. It is also recorded that at some point between 1939 and 1945 human remains that had been found at the site were reburied in the churchyard at Trottiscliffe. This excavation revealed all the existing sarsens surrounding the monument, several which had previously been buried. The stones of the chamber were shored up with concrete foundations where Filkins deemed it necessary. Although Filkins' excavation was comprehensive, it ignored stone holes, packing stones, and their relationship to the mound. In 1998, Ashbee noted that while from "a present-day perspective, it is possible to see shortcomings [in Filkins' excavation ...] in terms of the general standards of the early part of this century, there is much to commend."
### Management by The National Trust
In his 1924 publication dealing with Kent, the archaeologist O. G. S. Crawford, then working as the archaeological officer for the Ordnance Survey, listed the Coldrum Stones alongside the other Medway Megaliths. In 1926, the Coldrum Stones were given to The National Trust, a charity which dedicated it as a memorial to the Kentish prehistorian Benjamin Harrison. A plaque was erected to mark this, which erroneously termed the monument a stone circle; in 1953, the archaeologist Leslie Grinsell expressed the view that "it is hoped that this error may be rectified in the near future". Still owned by the Trust, the site is open to visitors all year round, free of charge. On their website, the Trust advises visitors to look for "stunning views from the top of the barrow". John H. Evans characterised the site as "the most impressive" of the Medway Megaliths, while Grinsell described it as "the finest and most complete" of the group.
Among the Pagans who use the Coldrum Stones for their ritual activities, there is general satisfaction with the Trust's management of the site, although some frustration at the poor access for disabled visitors. A patch of scorched earth exists on the grass in the centre of the monument, perhaps used by Pagans as well as non-Pagans, and the Trust warden responsible for the site has decided to leave it there rather than seeding it over, in order to encourage any who do light fires to do so in the same spot rather than nearer to the stones themselves. The site also faces a problem from litter left by visitors, with Pagans who regularly visit the site cleaning this up.
|
2,286,114 |
Paint It Black
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1966 song by the Rolling Stones
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[
"1966 singles",
"1966 songs",
"1968 singles",
"1971 singles",
"1990 singles",
"Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles",
"British psychedelic rock songs",
"Cashbox number-one singles",
"Chris Farlowe songs",
"Decca Records singles",
"Dutch Top 40 number-one singles",
"Immediate Records singles",
"Liberty Records singles",
"London Records singles",
"RPM Top Singles number-one singles",
"Raga rock songs",
"Song recordings produced by Andrew Loog Oldham",
"Song recordings produced by Jerry Goldstein (producer)",
"Songs about death",
"Songs about depression",
"Songs written by Jagger–Richards",
"The Animals songs",
"The Last Witch Hunter",
"The Rolling Stones songs",
"UK Singles Chart number-one singles",
"Versa (band) songs",
"W.A.S.P. songs",
"War (American band) songs"
] |
"Paint It Black" is a song recorded in 1966 by the English rock band the Rolling Stones. A product of the songwriting partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it is a raga rock song with Indian, Middle Eastern and Eastern European influences and lyrics about grief and loss. London Records released the song as a single on 7 May 1966 in the United States, and Decca Records released it on 13 May in the United Kingdom. Two months later, London Records included it as the opening track on the American version of the band's 1966 studio album Aftermath, though it is not on the original UK release.
Originating from a series of improvisational melodies played by Brian Jones on the sitar, the song features all five members of the band contributing to the final arrangement although only Jagger and Richards were credited as songwriters. In contrast to previous Rolling Stones singles with straightforward rock arrangements, "Paint It Black" has unconventional instrumentation, including a prominent sitar, the Hammond organ and castanets. This instrumental experimentation matches other songs on Aftermath. The song was influential to the burgeoning psychedelic genre as the first chart-topping single to feature the sitar, and widened the instrument's audience. Reviews of the song at the time were mixed, and some music critics believed its use of the sitar was an attempt to copy the Beatles, while others criticised its experimental style and doubted its commercial potential.
"Paint It Black" was a major chart success for the Rolling Stones, remaining 11 weeks (including two at number one) on the US Billboard Hot 100, and 10 weeks (including one atop the chart) on the Record Retailer chart in the UK. Upon a reissue in 2007, it reentered the UK Singles Chart for 11 weeks. It was the band's third number-one single in the US and sixth in the UK. The song also topped charts in Canada and the Netherlands. It received a platinum certification in the UK from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and from Italy's Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana (FIMI).
"Paint It Black" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018, and Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song number 213 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2011, the song was added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of "The Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll". Many artists have covered "Paint It Black" since its initial release. It has been included on many of the band's compilation albums and several film soundtracks. It has been played on a number of Rolling Stones tours.
## Background
In 1965, popularity of the Rolling Stones increased markedly with a series of international hit singles written by lead singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards. While 1964 saw the band reach the top of both the albums and singles charts in their native United Kingdom, other bands from Britain dominated the American market, such as the Beatles. In 1965, the Stones crossed over to the American market with their first number one single, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", and first number one album Out of Our Heads. That year also saw the Stones reach the top of the charts for the first time in countries such as Finland, Germany, and South Africa.
This success attracted the attention of Allen Klein, an American businessman who became their US representative in August while Andrew Loog Oldham, the group's manager, continued in the role of promoter and record producer. One of Klein's first actions on the band's behalf was to force Decca Records to grant a \$1.2 million royalty advance to the group, bringing the members their first signs of financial wealth and allowing them to purchase country houses and new cars. Their October–December 1965 tour of North America was the group's fourth and largest tour there up to that point. According to the biographer Victor Bockris, through Klein's involvement, the concerts afforded the band "more publicity, more protection and higher fees than ever before."
By this time, the Rolling Stones had begun to respond to the increasingly sophisticated music of the Beatles, in comparison to whom they had long been promoted by Oldham as a rougher alternative. With the success of the Jagger–Richards-penned singles "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965), "Get Off of My Cloud" (1965) and "19th Nervous Breakdown" (1966), the band increasingly rivalled the musical and cultural influence of the Beatles, and began to be identified as one of the major pillars of the British Invasion. The Stones' outspoken, surly attitude on songs like "Satisfaction" alienated the Establishment detractors of rock music, which music historian Colin King explains, "only made the group more appealing to those sons and daughters who found themselves estranged from the hypocrisies of the adult world – an element that would solidify into an increasingly militant and disenchanted counterculture as the decade wore on."
## Development
"Paint It Black" came at a pivotal period in the band's recording history. The Jagger–Richards songwriting collaboration had begun producing more original material for the band over the past year, with the early model of Stones albums featuring only a few Jagger–Richards compositions having been replaced by that of albums such as Out of Our Heads and December's Children (and Everybody's), each of which consisted of half original tracks and half cover songs. This trend culminated in the sessions for Aftermath (1966) where, for the first time, the duo penned every track on the album. Brian Jones, originally the band's founder and leader over the first few years of its existence, began feeling overshadowed by the prominence of Jagger and Richards' contributions to the group.
Despite having contributed to early songs by the Stones via the Nanker Phelge pseudonym, Jones had less and less influence over the group's direction as their popularity grew primarily as a result of original Jagger–Richards singles. Jones grew bored attempting to write songs with conventional guitar melodies. To alleviate his boredom, he began exploring Eastern instruments, specifically the Indian sitar, with a goal to bolstering the musical texture and complexity of the band's sound. A multi-instrumentalist, Jones could develop a tune on the sitar in a short time; he had a background with the instrument largely from his studies under Harihar Rao, a disciple of Ravi Shankar.
Over 1965, the sitar had become a more and more prominent instrument in the landscape of British rock. The Yardbirds had attempted to record "Heart Full of Soul" with the sitar as part of the arrangement in April; however, they had run into problems getting the instrument to "cut through" the mix, and the session musician responsible for playing the instrument had trouble staying within the 4/4 time signature of the song. Ultimately, the final version of "Heart Full of Soul" featured a fuzz guitar in place of the sitar, although the song's distinctively Indian timbre remained. Following similar Indian-influenced experimentation by the Kinks on "See My Friends" that nonetheless still used guitar as the primary instrument, the first British band to release a recording featuring the sitar was the Beatles, with "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" released that December on the album Rubber Soul. Following a discussion with the Beatles' lead guitarist George Harrison, who had recently played the sitar on the sessions for "Norwegian Wood" in October 1965, Jones began devoting more time to the sitar, and began arranging basic melodies with the instrument. One of these melodies morphed over time into the tune featured in "Paint It Black".
## Writing and recording
Jagger and Richards wrote the lyrics and much of the chord progression of "Paint It Black" during the first group of sessions for the then untitled Aftermath the previous December, and while on the 1966 Australian tour. Initially, the first group of sessions were to be released as an album by themselves, then titled Could You Walk on the Water? In mid-January 1966, the British press announced that a new Rolling Stones LP carrying that title would be released on 10 March. In Rolling with the Stones, Wyman refers to the announcement as "audacity" on Oldham's part. A Decca spokesman said the company would not issue an album with such a title "at any price"; Oldham's idea upset executives at the company's American distributor, London Records, who feared the allusion to Jesus walking on water would provoke a negative response from Christians.
The title controversy embroiled the Stones in a conflict with Decca, delaying the Stones' next studio album's release from March to April 1966. The delay, however, gave the Stones more time to record new material for the upcoming album, which had now been retitled Aftermath. Upon their return from Australasia, it was one of the new songs worked on for the revised new album. "Paint It Black" was recorded as the Stones had begun to take more time recording their material. Referring to the atmosphere of the Stones' sessions at the time, Richards told Beat Instrumental magazine in February 1966: "Our previous sessions have always been rush jobs. This time we were able to relax a little, take our time." Sound engineer Dave Hassinger recorded the song on 6 and 9 March 1966 at RCA Studios in Los Angeles. Andrew Loog Oldham produced the track, as with all of the Stones' recordings until 1967. Both the single's US and UK B-sides were also recorded on these dates, as were a majority of album tracks for Aftermath.
"Paint It Black" follows a simple verse form that lacks a refrain. It starts with five consecutive 16-bar verses before relaxing into a chanted section and finishing in a frantic coda. The song was written originally as a standard pop arrangement in a minor key similar to "The House of the Rising Sun", which Jagger humorously compared to "songs for Jewish weddings". The Stones were dissatisfied with this version and considered scrapping the song altogether. During a session break, Bill Wyman twiddled with a Hammond organ in search of a heavier bass sound; Wyman's playing inspired the uptempo and Eastern pentatonic melody. The sitar was brought into the mix when Harihar Rao walked into the studio with one in hand. With the sitar, Jones combined his recent melodic improvisations with the chord progression and lyrics provided by Jagger and Richards. Soon after the recording session, Richards felt the track's conclusion was over-recorded and that it could have been improved.
Wyman was later critical of Oldham listing Jagger and Richards as songwriters to the exclusion of the rest of the Stones. He felt "Paint It Black" should have been credited to the band's pseudonym, Nanker Phelge, rather than Jagger–Richards, since the song's final arrangement originated from a studio improvisation by Jones, Watts and himself, and Jones was responsible for providing the melody line on the sitar. In the view of pop historian Andrew Grant Jackson, "Paint It Black" bears a strong resemblance to the Supremes' 1965 hit "My World Is Empty Without You", which used "a foreboding minor key with harpsichord and organ".
## Music and lyrics
In a 1995 interview, commenting on the musical styles found on Aftermath, Jagger described "Paint It Black" as "this kind of Turkish song". According to music scholar James E. Perone, although the introductory sitar passage is played in an Indian fashion, "the rhythmic and melodic feel of the Eastern-sounding phrases actually call to mind the Middle East more than India". Jagger's droning and slightly nasal singing complement the motif Jones plays on the sitar. Wyman's heavy bass, Charlie Watts' low-pitch drumming and Richards' bolero-driven acoustic guitar outro drive "Paint It Black". Commentators and reviewers have classified "Paint It Black" as raga rock, psychedelia, and psychedelic rock. Perone named "Paint It Black" as one of the Stones' 1966 songs that acts as an explicit attempt to transcend the blues-based rock and roll conventions of the Stones' previous songs, along with other Aftermath songs such as "Stupid Girl", "Lady Jane" and "Under My Thumb".
Using colour-based metaphors, the song's lyrics describe the grief suffered by someone stunned by the sudden and unexpected loss of a partner, leading to what author Tony Visconti terms "a blanket worldview of desperation and desolation, with no hint of hope." The lyrics have also given rise to alternative interpretations scholars consider less likely, ranging from a bad trip on hallucinogens to the Vietnam War. Perone noted in 2012 that the lyrical content – a character "so entrenched in his depression and rage that he has lost all hope" – establishes a rough concept for Aftermath's American edition, the following songs offering insight into "the darkness of his psyche" and possible reasons for its darkness. Perone argues the resulting connections among the songs on Aftermath lend it a conceptual unity which, although not sufficient for it to be considered a concept album, allows for the record to be understood "as a psychodrama around the theme of love, desire and obsession that never quite turns out right". As Perone explains:
> The individual songs seem to ping-pong back and forth between themes of love/desire for women and the desire to control women and out-and-out misogyny. However, the band uses musical connections between songs as well as the sub-theme of travel, the use of feline metaphors for women and other lyrical connections to suggest that the characters whom lead singer Mick Jagger portrays throughout the album are really one and perhaps stem from the deep recesses of his psyche.
The Village Voice music critic Robert Christgau described "Paint It Black" as an example of the Stones' development as artists. According to Christgau, the texture of the Stones' blues-derived hard rock is "permanently enriched" as Jones "daub[s] on occult instrumental [colours]". Christgau praised Mick Jagger specifically for his influence on the Stones' artistic identity on their 1966 material, describing him as a lyricist "whose power, subtlety and wit are unparalleled in contemporary popular music", and additionally suggested that Jagger and Richards rank second as composers of melody in rock, behind only John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
## Release
London Records released "Paint It Black" as a single in the US on 7 May 1966; Decca Records released it on 13 May in the UK. "Paint It Black"'s UK B-side was "Long, Long While", a song that was not released on any of the band's studio albums. Richie Unterberger of AllMusic later described "Long, Long While" as an underappreciated song, with a "considerably different" tone than most of the band's work, and commented that it was better than many of the tracks the Stones selected for their studio albums. Upon its original release, the song was credited to "Jagger-Richard", as Andrew Loog Oldham advised Keith Richards to use the surname Richard professionally on the Stones' releases during the 1960s. Later releases of the song have changed the credit to "Jagger-Richards".
In the US, "Stupid Girl" was chosen as its US B-side. Both songs were included in the American release of Aftermath, with "Paint It Black" being a new addition when compared to the earlier British edition "Paint It Black" became Aftermath's opening track, replacing "Mother's Little Helper", while "Stupid Girl" remained as the second track on the album. Its delayed North American release allowed pirate radio stations to play the single up to two weeks before the album appeared. The song was originally released as "Paint It, Black", the comma being an error by Decca, which stirred controversy over its racial interpretation. The Stones performed "Paint It Black" live on The Ed Sullivan Show on 11 September.
Due to "Paint It Black" not appearing on the UK edition of Aftermath and being released as a non-album single, its first album release in the UK came on the UK edition of the compilation Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass) (1966), though the album was not released with the song as part of its track listing in the US. The first release of the song on a compilation album in the US came on Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2) (1969).
Later compilations by the Rolling Stones featuring "Paint It Black" include Hot Rocks 1964–1971 (1971), Singles Collection: The London Years (1989), Forty Licks (2002), and GRRR! (2012). Live recordings are on the concert albums Flashpoint (1991), Live Licks (2004), Shine a Light (2008), Hyde Park Live (2013), and Havana Moon (2016).
## Critical reception and legacy
Initial reaction to "Paint It Black" was mixed. Some music critics found the addition of the sitar to be simply a case of the band copying the Beatles. In his book Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones, Paul Trynka comments on the influence of Harrison's sitar playing on the Beatles' song "Norwegian Wood" from the Rubber Soul album and draws parallels with Jones' droning sitar melody on "Paint It Black". Responding to claims that he was imitating the Beatles, Jones replied: "What utter rubbish", comparing the argument to saying that all groups using a guitar copy each other merely by using the instrument. Jonathan Bellman, an American musicologist, agreed with Jones, writing in a 1997 issue of The Journal of Musicology that the events are an example of concurrent musical and instrumental experimentation. Jones' sitar part on the track influenced the development of a whole subgenre of minor-key psychedelic music.
Lindy Shannon of the La Crosse Tribune felt "Paint It Black", the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" and the Beatles' "Rain" were straying from the "commercial field" and instead "going into a sort of distorted area of unpleasant sounds". Staff at Melody Maker lauded the track, calling it "a glorious Indian raga-riot that will send the Stones back to number one". Writing for Disc and Music Echo, Penny Valentine praised Jagger's singing, writing that it was "better than ever" but was critical of the track's sitar. Guitar Player's Jesse Gress cited "Paint It Black" as originating the 1960s ragarock craze. In a review for New Musical Express (NME), Keith Altham considered "Paint It Black" the band's best single since "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" was released the previous year. A reviewer for Billboard predicted that Aftermath would become another hit for the band, citing "Paint It Black" as the focal point of this hard rock album and praising Oldham's production. Record World said "Guys are in depressed mood, but the rhythm is anything but depressed. Irrepressible hit." The Herald News considered the song a "top record ... for teeners", and in The Sunday Press Nancy Brown described it as a "pulsating, blues-soaked romantic tear-jerker". In the San Francisco Examiner, Ralph J. Gleason lauded the song for its "hypnotizing tone" and "same qualities of ambiguity and obscurity as some of the previous Stones hits". In April 1967, while hosting the television documentary Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, Leonard Bernstein praised the song for its "arab café" sound, and cited it as an example of contemporary pop music's ability to evoke disparate moods through instrumentation.
In a retrospective review, Richie Unterberger of AllMusic called the song an "eerily insistent" classic that features some of "the best use of sitar on a rock record", and in another AllMusic review wrote it is "perhaps the most effective use of the Indian instrument in a rock song". Writing on the song's 50th anniversary in 2016, Dave Swanson of Ultimate Classic Rock considered the song, like its parent album Aftermath, to be a major turning point in artistic evolution for the band, noting: "'Paint It, Black' wasn't just another song by just another rock group; it was an explosion of ideas presented in one neat three-minute package." In 2017, ranking Aftermath as one of the best albums of the 1960s, Judy Berman of Pitchfork described the song as "rock's most nihilistic hit to date". David Palmer, editor of the Cullman Times, wrote that the "attitude" songs on Aftermath – particularly "Paint It Black" – influenced the nihilistic outlook of punk music. Stereogum critic Tom Breihan praised the song as a strong example of the band's brand of "swirling doom-blues", and praised its heavy sound and dark lyrics as ahead of its time when compared to the landscape of popular music in 1966.
"Paint It Black" inspired almost four hundred covers. It has placed on many "best songs" lists including those by Rolling Stone, Vulture magazine, NME, and Pitchfork. The Recording Academy inducted the song into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018. It is ranked number 213 on Rolling Stones list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and according to Acclaimed Music it is the 115th most celebrated song in popular music history.
## Commercial performance
In the UK, "Paint It Black" peaked at number one on the Record Retailer chart during a 10-week stay, becoming the Rolling Stones' sixth UK number one. Seven days after its UK release, "Paint It Black" had sold 300,000 advance copies; the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) later certified it platinum. In 2007, the song entered the UK Singles chart at number 70 for an 11-week stint. In Germany, "Paint It Black" peaked at number two on the Musikmarkt Hit-Parade; the Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI) certified the 2018 re-issue gold. The single was a top five hit in other European countries, peaking at number two in Austria, Ireland and Norway; number three in Belgium; and number four in Spain. After its 1990 reissue, "Paint It Black" charted at number 61. The single's 2007 reissue charted at number 49 on the Official German Charts and its 2012 re-issue charted number at 127 in France.
"Paint It Black" debuted at number 48 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart for the week of 14 May 1966. The song took three weeks to rise to number one, where it stayed for two consecutive weeks, being replaced by Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night." Its stint at number one made it the band's third in the US and the first song to feature a sitar to peak at number one in the country. By June, it had sold more than a million copies. It rose to number one in a "violent shakeup" of the list where 10 of its 20 songs appeared for the first time. "Paint It Black" remained on the chart for 11 weeks. Further reissues of the single have not peaked on the Billboard Hot 100, but 2008 sales saw "Paint It Black" reach number 73 on the Billboard Hot Canadian Digital Song Sales. According to the pop historian Richard Havers, Aftermath's 1966 chart run in the US, where it reached number 2 on the Billboard chart and number 1 on those published by Cash Box and Record World, was assisted by the success of "Paint It Black". "Paint It Black" also topped singles charts in Canada and the Netherlands, and was ranked within the Top 10 highest performing singles of the year in Austria, despite not reaching number 1 on the weekly charts.
In a KEYS national survey taken in June 1966, "Paint It Black" was number one in the United States. Surveys conducted by the Associated Press and United Press International identified the song as ranking No. 1 in the US the week of 12–19 June 1966. On the 1966 year-end charts, "Paint It Black" ranked number 34 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number 30 on the Record Retailer chart. The 1990 reissue of "Paint It Black" topped the Netherlands Single Top 100 and peaked at number 11 in Belgium.
## Live performances
The Rolling Stones performed "Paint It Black" during their tours of America and England in 1966, following its release, along with other songs from Aftermath such as "Under My Thumb" and "Lady Jane", One notable live performance of the song was as the opening song of the Stones' performance at the Royal Albert Hall, a performance remembered for ending prematurely due to a riot, which led to rock bands being banned from performing at the venue. Footage of the riot would later be used in the promotional video for the Stones' next single, "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?". Despite its status as a hit single and as a staple of these shows, "Paint It Black" was not included on the Stones' live album documenting their tour of England, Got Live If You Want It!.
"Paint It Black" has become a regular fixture of the Stones' concert setlists following its release, and has been performed during the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour (1991), Licks Tour (2002–2003), A Bigger Bang Tour (2005–2007), 50 & Counting (2012–2013), 14 On Fire (2014), América Latina Olé Tour 2016, No Filter Tour (2017–2021) and Sixty tour (2022).
## Personnel
According to authors Andy Babiuk and Greg Prevost, except where noted:
The Rolling Stones
- Mick Jagger – lead and harmony vocals; writer
- Keith Richards – harmony vocal; lead and acoustic guitars; writer
- Brian Jones – sitar, acoustic guitar
- Bill Wyman – bass, Hammond organ, maracas, cowbell
- Charlie Watts – drums, tambourine, castanets
Additional musicians and production
- Jack Nitzsche – piano
- Dave Hassinger – sound engineer
- Andrew Loog Oldham – producer
In Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon's book The Rolling Stones All the Songs, they add a question mark after Jones' guitar contribution and credit "tambourine, bongos, castanets" to "unidentified musicians". In the book Rolling Stones Gear by Babiuk and Prevost, they credit an acoustic guitar contribution to Jones, maracas and cowbell to Wyman and tambourine and castanets to Watts.
Studio locations'''
- Recorded at RCA Studios (Los Angeles)
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications
## Other versions
American funk rock band Eric Burdon and War released a cover of the song in 1970, which reached number 31 on the Dutch Top 40 singles chart. Bahamian musician Exuma included a cover of the song on his 1973 album Life. English all-female post-punk band the Mo-dettes released their version in 1980 which just missed the UK top 40, peaking at No. 42. Canadian speed metal band Anvil recorded a cover for their 1981 debut album Hard 'n' Heavy. Irish rock band U2 included a cover of "Paint It Black" as the B-side to their 1992 single "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" and did so again with the 20th anniversary rerelease of their album Achtung Baby in 2011. The London Symphony Orchestra performed a cover of the song in their 1994 "Symphonic Music of the Rolling Stones" performance. American singer Tracy Lawrence covered "Paint It Black" for the compilation album Stone Country: Country Artists Perform the Songs of the Rolling Stones in 1997. American singer-songwriter Vanessa Carlton included a cover of the song on her 2002 debut album Be Not Nobody, which was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Canadian rock band Rush played one minute and ten seconds of the song during their 2003 performance at Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto. American singer-songwriter Ciara recorded a cover version for the 2015 film, The Last Witch Hunter. Marie Douceur and Marie Colèrefor recorded a French cover for the 2023 film John Wick: Chapter 4.
## Usage in media
"Paint It Black" has seen commercial use in film, video games and other entertainment media. "Paint It Black" plays during the end credits of the films Full Metal Jacket (1987) and The Devil's Advocate (1997),, was a plot device in the supernatural horror film Stir of Echoes (1999), and was featured in Black Adam (2022), during a slow motion fight sequence. In 1987 it became was the opening theme song for the broadcast version of the CBS television show, Tour of Duty.. The trailers for both the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops III (2015) and the film The Mummy (2017) feature "Paint It Black". Multiple episodes of the TV series Westworld use an orchestral arrangement of the song by Ramin Djawadi. A cello arrangement of the song is featured prominently in the Netflix original series Wednesday (2022). The song features on the soundtracks to multiple video games, including Twisted Metal: Black (2001), Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (2007) and Guitar Hero Live'' (2015).
|
445,095 |
Pokémon Channel
| 1,161,153,920 |
2003 video game for the GameCube
|
[
"2003 video games",
"Adventure games",
"Ambrella games",
"GameCube games",
"GameCube-only games",
"Games with GameCube-GBA connectivity",
"Pokémon spin-off games",
"Simulation video games",
"Single-player video games",
"Video game sequels",
"Video games about mice and rats",
"Video games developed in Japan",
"Virtual pet video games"
] |
Pokémon Channel, released in Japan as Pokémon Channel \~Together with Pikachu!\~ (Japanese: ポケモンチャンネル ~ピカチュウといっしょ!~, Hepburn: Pokemon Channeru \~Pikachū to Issho!\~), is a 2003 video game in the Pokémon series for the GameCube, developed by Ambrella, published by The Pokémon Company and distributed by Nintendo. The player's goal is to help Professor Oak refine and promote his TV network through watching broadcasts with the mouse-like Pikachu. The game contains elements of the adventure, digital pet, and simulation genres. The player can explore full 3D environments, have Pikachu converse with other Pokémon, and collect various items.
The game was developed rather quickly as a sequel to the Nintendo 64 title Hey You, Pikachu! and to promote the Nintendo e-Reader accessory, and uses a novel 3D texturing effect. It was first showcased at Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2003 and later through a month-long series of promotional events in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. It was released on July 18, 2003, in Japan, December 1 in North America, and April 2, 2004, in Europe. In Japan, the game sold 66,373 copies in its first year. It received mixed reviews, which generally criticized its low level of interactivity and repetitive sound effects, though its collecting aspects and visuals were somewhat better received.
## Gameplay
Pokémon Channel is difficult to categorize into a genre, as it incorporates elements of adventure, simulation, and digital pet games. The graphics are in 3D, the perspective is first-person, and the player navigates and selects things with a cursor. The game centers on watching television programs with Pikachu, a mouse-like Pokémon. The player, who lives in a house, can channel-surf freely among the various channels of a television network created by the Pokémon professor, Professor Oak, as well as explore one room of the house and several outdoor areas. Pikachu sometimes displays emotional reactions while watching, such as happiness or anger. The game takes place over a few days, with unique plot events on each. The GameCube's inner clock tracks time such that every in-game day lasts at least as long as one real-time day.
While several channels are available, only a few are essential to the completion of the game. The player saves the game by reporting on recent accomplishments to Oak at Prof. Oak Report, watches episodes of an anime series at Pichu Bros., and listens to plot-advancing news coverage from Psyduck at Pokémon News Flash (PNF). On a channel called Shop 'n Squirtle, the player uses the game's currency, "Poké", to purchase bus passes to travel among the game's locations, as well as non-essential items like Pokémon dolls, new television sets in various styles, and other decorations, all delivered by Delibird (a bird-like Pokémon that carries various items in its satchel). Extraneous channels include the trivia-based game show Quiz Wobbuffet, where the player earns Poké, the art exhibition program Smeargle's Art Study, where Smeargle gives opinions on art that can be created in a paint-by-numbers style in the player's house, and the exercise program Smoochum Shape-Up.
The main collectibles available in Pokémon Channel are trading cards that display various Pokémon. The trading cards, known in game as Nice Cards, exist in three forms: Single, which simply show a picture; Motion, which are holographic; and Platinum, which are holographic and play the respective Pokémon's cries. The collectibles can be found by having Pikachu speak with other Pokémon and help them with tasks, or by ordering from Shop 'n Squirtle. There is a virtual Pokémon Mini console hidden under the player's bed that plays 10 games in the Japanese release and six games internationally. These games are all excerpts from games released for the real-life Pokémon Mini, with the exception of Snorlax's Lunch Time, which is exclusive to Pokémon Channel. The games are simple and mainly based on rhythm.
## Plot
The game opens with a group of Magnemite—magnet-like Pokémon with levitation abilities—delivering a television to the player's house. Upon turning the television on, Professor Oak appears to request the player's help: he is creating a new television network for Trainers and their Pokémon to enjoy together, and he wants the player to serve as a beta tester. He has them watch an episode of an anime called Pichu Brothers in Party Panic! and then introduces the game's basic features before leaving them alone. The player then hears Pokémon cries from outside, which turns out to belong to the mouse-like Pikachu and two other creatures: the reptilian Treecko and the avian Torchic. While the others run off, Pikachu stays and the player adopts it. Oak decides to allow Pikachu to be a second beta tester.
After completing a few tasks, the player returns to Oak's channel, and the Professor remarks that Pikachu has behaved remarkably well. Overexcited, Pikachu uses its Thunderbolt attack on the television and destroys it. Unfazed, Oak has the Magnemite deliver a "retro" television while the player and Pikachu wait for a replacement of the original. When the replacement arrives the next morning, the Professor remarks that the player's viewership has brought life to the network and helped spawn new shows. The player then finds a bus stop and visits Viridian Forest, a location that first appeared in Pokémon Red and Blue.
The third day opens with Pikachu asleep in the cupboard and Oak expressing pleasure at the Pokémon's growing attachment to the player. On the fourth day, Pikachu invites its friends back over. Little else occurs on these two days besides visits to the snowy Mt. Snowfall and the tropical Cobalt Coast, although Oak does continue to laud the player's investment in the network, which has become a huge success.
On the morning of the fifth day, the Pokémon News Flash reports on a breaking news story: a disc containing the unaired fifth episode of Pichu Brothers was dropped and lost by the delivery Magnemite on their way to the show's broadcasting studio. After obtaining a lamp from a friendly Duskull in the front lawn, the player takes a bus back to Mt. Snowfall, where the disc was presumed lost. Eastward are the Ruins of Truth, where the stubborn Ghost-type Pokémon Gengar blocks the player's path until it is scared away by the lamp. Inside the Ruins, Pikachu gets stuck inside a statue of the bat-like Pokémon Golbat. Upon being shaken free, the missing disc pops out. The player hands it back to Magnemite, who is waiting sheepishly outside, and heads home to watch the last episode, along with a video called Meowth's Party.
Oak informs the player that every program produced for his network has been aired, thanking the player and Pikachu for their time, and announces the impending arrival of a gift for them. The gift, which arrives the following morning, is a "Star Projector", a device for viewing images flashed across the sky. That night, Professor Oak notices that a Pokémon has arrived at the player's house—the rare and legendary Jirachi—which leaves him in shock. The player, Pikachu, and Jirachi then visit Camp Starlight, the locale for which the Projector is intended. Using it, they project the entire series of Pichu Brothers and Meowth's Party onto the sky for the universe to see, and the story ends. This event also allows players of the PAL version (i.a. Europe and Australia) to download a Jirachi to a copy of Pokémon Ruby or Sapphire (as well as the patch that fixes the Berry Glitch) via the Nintendo GameCube – Game Boy Advance link cable.
## Development and release
Pokémon Channel was developed by Nintendo subsidiary Ambrella and published by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. It was created both to serve as a spiritual successor to Hey You, Pikachu!—a similar digital pet-type game wherein the player plays with a Pikachu—and to promote the Nintendo e-Reader peripheral device. The game included three e-Reader-compatible cards, but not the e-Reader device itself. When scanned, the cards upload new templates for the player to paint and for Smeargle to critique.
The game uses the visual effect of applying pre-rendered video footage to a polygon, specifically the game's pre-recorded shows on the television. IGN writer Anoop Gantayat praised this effect's implementation, although he did note some minor graphical issues visible in the transition from distanced to full-screen viewing. Also unusual for the Pokémon video game series, the Pokémon's voices are borrowed from the anime and sound like their names.
The game was first announced at E3 2003, where IGN staff noted that the game's demo appeared to be early in development due to its choppy frame rate. Pokémon Channel was released on July 18, 2003, in Japan, December 1 in North America, and April 2, 2004, in Europe. The game was showcased on its Japanese release date at the Sapporo, Hokkaido, location of Pokémon Fest 2003 (ポケモンフェスタ2003, Pokemon Festa 2003), a series of promotional events that extended across Japan and lasted about a month. Attendees could play the game at GameCube kiosks.
## Reception
Pokémon Channel has scores of 51% and 55% on the review aggregators GameRankings and Metacritic, respectively, both indicating poor reception. Reviewers felt that the game would only suit existing Pokémon fans and young children: staff at 1UP.com summarized that "the various diversions here are cute, slickly produced, and entertaining, assuming you really, really dig Pokémon", and that even fans would be bored if over the age of five. Justin Leeper of Game Informer claimed that fans would enjoy it but "everyone else will be turned off, pun intended". Author Tokyo Drifter of GamePro guessed that the game had been "tailored for die-hard fans" and would please no one else. IGN's Mary Jane Irwin stated that its intuitive interface, copious instructions, and "mindless entertainment" would keep young players entertained. Nintendo Power's review called the game "hours of fun for Pokémon fans."
Reviewers complained about the game's low level of interactivity due to most of the gameplay time being spent watching television with Pikachu. Summarizing the gameplay in general as "weak", GameSpot's Ricardo Torres argued that the game's promising ideas were fundamentally deadened by "the gimmick of having to 'virtually' watch television programs" and the long stretches of time this entails. Leeper claimed that Pikachu "will be content much longer than you will" and decried the channels' non-interactive nature while praising the unlockable status of a few. Darryl Vassar of GameSpy went even further and claimed that there was "no gameplay". He gave the game only one star out of five as a result, despite calling the animation quality and Pokémon voices "decent". Tokyo Drifter found its low interactivity and slow pace to be the two biggest barriers for Pokémon fan enjoyment, and gave the game a 3.0 on a five-point scale. Irwin stated that the player would desire more interactivity and condemned the programs overall, with the exception of Pichu Bros, which she called "the only worthwhile programming". GMR magazine felt the game was "more of a cross between a virtual pet and one of those edutainment titles from Humongous" and criticizing the game's bulk on watching television and noting that isn't very interactive. They concluded the game review with a score of 6 out of 10.
The game's 3D graphics received lukewarm opinions. Torres called them "decent but unspectacular" and "bland". His praise focused on the animations of the Pokémon with "distinct animations that suit their personalities", especially that of Pikachu. Irwin echoed these opinions. Vassar stated that the Pokémon animations were better than those in the then-upcoming GameCube title Pokémon Colosseum and found the environments passable, if boring and overly limited. Tokyo Drifter found the environments "bright and colorful" while wholeheartedly praising the smooth and "adorable" Pokémon animations.
The sound and music were negatively received. Torres focused on their repetitiveness, stating that some of the music within the programs was catchy but "it starts to grate after some of the mandatory repeated viewings you'll have to endure", and that the paucity of sound effects "puts the weight of the audio burden on the Pokémon voices, which, while accurate, are naturally repetitive". Irwin and Vassar gave special focus to the repetitiveness of the voices. Tokyo Drifter gave little opinion on the voices but found the lack of voice acting for Oak to be disappointing.
Critics praised the large number of collectible items and Pokémon in the game. Torres noted the game's many items to collect and Pokémon for Pikachu to meet, and praised the game's increased replay value as a result. Tokyo Drifter thought similarly, calling the collecting aspects "a prominent part of the gaming experience". Irwin found the collecting aspects a nice way to pass time and called the incorporation of the virtual Pokémon Mini "a nice diversion".
Within three days of its Japanese release, Pokémon Channel sold 12,581 copies, making it the thirteenth best-selling game among all platforms during its release week (July 14 to July 20). By August 17, 2003, its Japanese sales totaled 38,617 copies. The title had sold 66,373 copies in Japan by December 28 of the same year.
|
2,866,436 |
Smallville (season 1)
| 1,172,239,023 |
Season of television series
|
[
"2001 American television seasons",
"2002 American television seasons",
"Smallville seasons"
] |
The first season of Smallville, an American television series developed by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, began airing on October 16, 2001, on The WB television network. The series recounts the early adventures of Kryptonian Clark Kent as he adjusts to his developing superpowers in the fictional town of Smallville, Kansas, during the years before he becomes Superman. The first season comprises 21 episodes and concluded its initial airing on May 21, 2002. Regular cast members during season one include Tom Welling, Kristin Kreuk, Michael Rosenbaum, Eric Johnson, Sam Jones III, Allison Mack, Annette O'Toole, and John Schneider.
The season's stories focus on Martha and Jonathan Kent's (O'Toole and Schneider) attempts to help their adopted son Clark (Welling) cope with his alien origin and control his developing superhuman abilities. Clark must deal with the meteor-infected individuals that begin appearing in Smallville, his love for Lana Lang (Kreuk), and not being able to tell his two best friends, Pete Ross (Jones III) and Chloe Sullivan (Mack), about his abilities or his origins. Clark also befriends Lex Luthor (Rosenbaum) after saving Lex's life. The season also follows Lex, as he tries to assert his independence from his father, Lionel Luthor (John Glover).
The episodes were filmed primarily in Vancouver and post-production work took place in Los Angeles. Gough and Millar assisted the writing staff with week-to-week story development. "Villain of the week" storylines were predominant during the first season; physical effects, make-up effects, and computer generated imagery became important components as well. Limited filming schedules sometimes forced guest actors to perform physical stunts, and the series regulars were more than willing to do stunt work. Episode budgets ultimately became strictly regulated, as the show frequently ran over budget during the first half of the season. The pilot broke The WB's viewership record for a debut series, and was nominated for various awards. Although the villain of the week storylines became a concern for producers, critical reception was generally favorable, and the series was noted as having a promising start. The first season was released on DVD on September 23, 2003, and included various special features that focused on individual episodes and the series as a whole. It has also been released on home media in regions 2 and 4 in the international markets.
## Episodes
## Production
### Writing
Ground rules for story development were established at the outset. Part of the marketing pitch, "no flights, no tights" dictated that Clark would not wear the Superman costume, nor would he fly. After initial discussion of possible storylines, a second rule decreed that Clark could never directly kill anyone. This created a dilemma since Clark must be able to defeat the "bad guys" from week to week. A solution developed in later episodes with the introduction of the Belle Reve sanitarium (Belle Reve is a Federal prison for metahumans and other supervillains in the comics).
After setting the ground rules, Gough and Millar conceived ideas that facilitated week-to-week story development. For example, kryptonite's role was expanded to include enhancement of the sins of the antagonist: instead of creating physical monsters, exposure to kryptonite would amplify their personal demons. This was not treated as literally in the pilot and "Metamorphosis" as it was in later episodes. In "Cool", it was "the 'cool' kid literally [becoming] cool, needing human body heat to stay alive". After several episodes, the writers developed a story that would help establish the show as more than a "villain of the week" series. The ninth episode ("Rogue"), which took longer than usual to develop due to its divergence from the standard formula, became their first "true crime story" and demonstrated that Smallville could include more than kryptonite-powered villains.
"What if" episodes were another Millar-Gough concept used to generate first season storylines. These episodes posed underlying questions about Clark. Episodes would evolve from basic questions, including: "what if someone had a crush on Lana, and acted on that obsession"; "what if someone found out Clark's secret"; "what if someone else had Clark's powers?" These three questions developed into the episodes "Metamorphosis", "Rogue", and "Leech", respectively. "Stray", episode 16, answered the question, "what if Clark had been adopted by the wrong parents and his powers were exploited?" "X-Ray" director Mark Verheiden and the rest of the crew realized divergent, unrelated storylines were not the best way to create episodes for Smallville. Verheiden believes "X-Ray" was the first episode that managed to bring all the side-stories together so that they affected characters other than Clark and Lana.
"Hourglass" was one of the stories included in Millar and Gough's initial pitch to the network (at the time it was referred to as "Cassandra"). "Hourglass" was the first episode to present two, distinct stories: the vengeful serial killer and the second sighted Cassandra. Two significant storylines in the same episode forced the writers to spend more time developing the episode. Cassandra's "visceral vision" (as it was referred to in the script) of Lex's future was developed into color storyboards to better illustrate to the filmmakers the "blood rain" described in the text.
When the filmmakers were dissatisfied with the initial drafts of episodes, specifically with the evolution of characters, they would rewrite events, or add scenes to re-establish the original vision. The character of Earl Jenkins (Tony Todd), intended to be a sympathetic villain, came across as "completely unlikable" in the original draft of "Jitters". The character suffers from over-exposure to kryptonite, causing massive seizures; if Jenkins happened to grab someone, they could be shaken to death. Originally, the character is first seen banging on the door of LuthorCorp and killing a security guard during one of his seizures. To present a more favorable aspect to the audience, a scene in which Earl visits his infant child was added to show that he was not a "raving maniac". Similar rewrites occurred with the characters Ryan James (Ryan Kelley) in "Stray" and Tyler Randall (Reynaldo Rosales) in "Reaper". In the original draft of "Stray", Ryan developed his telepathic abilities from exposure to kryptonite; to emphasize the show was not always about kryptonite-infected villains, the story was revised so that Ryan had his ability from birth. The network also expressed dissatisfaction with Ryan as a murderer, so the character was rewritten to be the "nice kid". The character of Tyler Randall shared Earl Jenkins's issue: he was not sympathetic enough in the filmmakers' eyes; intended to be an escaped prisoner, he was rewritten to be "the world's deadliest nice guy".
### Filming
Production was set up in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, because the creators were looking for a "Middle America landscape", and Vancouver was a good substitute for Kansas. David Nutter, the director of the pilot, was given 16 days for main unit filming, twice that of the normal timeframe. Despite the extended schedule, it was still a short amount of time, and he shot the pilot primarily from storyboards created by Adrien Van Viersen.
Millar developed most of the look for Smallville with the idea that Smallville should be the epitome of "Smalltown, USA". Millar's design required existing buildings to be painted, built, and remodeled. The Kent farm is the home of the Andalini family, and their barn was used for the pilot before a new barn was built. The new barn was one of the major additions to the sets of the episode "Metamorphosis". Production designer Doug Higgins and his crew built a fully functioning, three-story barn for the Kent farm on a converted soundstage in Burnaby. For the pilot, the crew built only a loft, with a set of stairs leading up to it, inside the existing barn on the Andalinis' property. To resemble the Andalinis' barn as closely as possible, Higgins had his crew locate 100-year-old wood to match the look of the Andalinis' barn. The episode "Hourglass" called for several scenes to take place at the White House. Instead of building their own set, the Smallville producers called John Wells, producer of the political drama television series The West Wing, and obtained permission to use the West Wing set to film the vision of Lex's future.
When the Smallville crew was not filming on one of the constructed sets, or on a sound stage, they were shooting on location at the surrounding Vancouver sites. During the filming of "Metamorphosis", Vancouver was holding a farmers' market, which proved beneficial to the Smallville crew, as "Metamorphosis" called for a similar event to take place in the episode. The market was on the verge of ending, so the filmmakers shot what wide-angle scenes they could at the time, and filmed a close up conversation between Whitney and Clark at the Andalini's farm, weeks after the initial market shooting. Other filming locations include Vancouver's Pacific National Exhibition and Burnaby's Swangard Stadium. The Pacific National Exhibit provided a storage silo for a scene in "Hourglass", which involved Harry Bollston (Eric Christian Olsen) attacking Martha Kent (O'Toole) in the Kents' corn silo. "Hothead" director Greg Beeman, who had previously worked with Gough and Millar on The Strip and Martial Law, used Swangard Stadium, as a substitution for Smallville High Stadium, for the opening football scene that took place at night.
When filming fell behind schedule, another director came in to assist the main unit director in finishing the episode. Greg Beeman assisted director Chris Long for the two "visceral visions of the future" that appeared in the episode "Hourglass". "Jitters" was an episode with so many changes that its initial scheduling as the second episode of the season was pushed back to the eighth spot. By the time filming for "Jitters" was completed, three directors had worked on the project: Greg Beeman, Phil Sgriccia, and Michael Watkins, the latter who was given sole directing credit for the episode.
### Effects
A big part of the Smallville series relies on the effects it delivers, whether digital, physical, or special make-up effects. The effects shots, part of the post-production work, are developed and added in Los Angeles. David Nutter hired Thomas Special Effects to create digital cornfields for the pilot episode. After attempting to grow ten thousand stalks of corn in a greenhouse, which only grew two feet tall, Nutter was forced to rely primarily on digital corn. Faux corn was also flown in from Arizona. CGI supervisor Bill Millar created digital butterflies for a scene in Lana's bedroom, and all the insects Greg Arkin (Chad Donella) collected in the episode "Metamorphosis". Greg's insects had to be created digitally, because a green hue was needed to illustrate the kryptonite radiation in the insects. After the opening credits, the first person view of someone, later revealed to be Clark, flying through Lana's open window and into her bedroom was created digitally. The effect was accomplished with stock footage, a sound stage and computer generated imagery. Stock footage shot from a helicopter, as it flew over several farms during the day, was used for the first person point of view. It was altered from day to night, and a CGI house was created in an empty field. Lana's bedroom as built on a soundstage, and CGI was used to create the illusion of someone traveling through her open window and stopping above her bed.
It was decided the effects of kryptonite poisoning on Clark, "Clark time", and the appearance of kryptonite when in the proximity of Clark would need to be illustrated in a way the audience could understand if they were not familiar with the character. Gough and Millar, after doing some research, learned the female audience was not aware of what was happening when Clark was exposed to kryptonite. Beginning with "Metamorphosis", whenever Clark was exposed to kryptonite, his veins would rise up and develop a green hue to illustrate the effect it was having. Close-up shots of Clark's hand were used for these scenes, and it was all created with digital animation. Gough and Millar developed the idea that kryptonite would only glow when it was around Clark, as it was meant to demonstrate the draining of his powers. "Clark time", the same idea behind bullet time, was created because previous incarnations had not explained the idea of what the world appears like to Clark when he is using his powers. The first instance of "Clark time" was used in the "Metamorphosis" scene where Greg Arkin attacks Clark and Jonathan in their barn. Jonathan is pushed over a banister and falls in the direction of some dangerous farm equipment. The effect involved slowing time down for everything except Clark, who would be moving at normal pace. When tackling Clark's emerging power of X-ray vision, Gough and Millar wanted to be able to see skeletons and bones, as opposed to previous incarnations that treated the ability like "see-through" vision. The recent advances in computer imagery helped them complete that task.
The digital effects costs for each episode could stretch the budget thin. In "Shimmer", Bill Millar, special effects supervisor, planned to create an artificial sunset for the closing scene involving Clark and Lana. The effects shot was supposed to last only a couple of seconds. James Marshall, the second unit director for the episode, decided to shoot the entire scene over the shoulders of Clark and Lana, looking at the sunset. The scene called for two greenscreen shots, but when Marshall was finished he had created seventeen greenscreen shots. The seventeen shots, which produced the artificial sunset, cost \$50,000 to produce. By comparison, the entire effects budget costs between \$65,000 and \$100,000.
Over-spending of that nature became a regular occurrence on the Smallville set. The regularity of over-spending came to an end with "Kinetic", as the studio decided to be stricter. With the budget on a stiffer guideline, the filmmakers were forced to cut scenes from "Kinetic", an episode that was caught in the push for more budget-friendly scripts. One of the scenes that was cut involved one of the thieves phasing through a safe wall, and acting as a portal for the merchandise to be passed through. When digital effects were not an option, Mike Walls, the physical effects supervisor who began his Smallville career with "Leech", still tried to provide big effects. For instance, Walls used 75 cars for the final action scene of "Kinetic", which were cabled off to protect the actors. Stunt coordinator Lauro Chartrand attempts to make sure the actors are used as much as possible when performing fight scenes, unless the scenes are particularly dangerous. The fast shooting schedule forces Chartrand to rely on guest stars who can perform their own stunts, because of the limited time to find a "good double" for the actor.
Physical effects were not an issue for the series regulars. Allison Mack performed her own stunts for the scene in "Hothead" where her character's office is set on fire, and again in "Kinetic", when she was cabled off and dangled 50 ft (15 m) above the ground. For "Nicodemus", the stunt coordinator received twice the help. Kristin Kreuk was expected to go to the tenth rung of a water tower, in a scene which involved her character climbing to the top and falling off. As filming progressed, Kreuk climbed to the top, so the crew cabled her off and dropped her 40 ft (12 m) to the bottom. John Schneider's experience from The Dukes of Hazzard led to him performing the stunt driving for his character. The scene required Schneider to slide his truck around a corner, while yelling at some pedestrians on the sidewalk. The previous scene had established the driver side window as closed, so Schneider improvised and opened the driver's door as he slid 90° around a corner.
## Reception
The series' pilot broke The WB's record for highest-rated debut with 8.35 million viewers, 3.8/9 in the 18-49 demographic, 4.5/12 in the 18–34 demographic and beat its lead-in Gilmore Girls, which was viewed by 5.99 million viewers, 2.4/6 in the 18-49 demographic, 2.8/8 in the 18-34 demographic by 39.4%, 58.3%, 60.7% respectively. In the 18–34 male demographic, its 5.0 rating nearly tripled its lead-in (1.7). After airing the first two episodes, which averaged 7.8 million viewers, the WB placed an order for a full season of 21 episodes. The first season averaged 5.9 million viewers weekly, placing \#115 in the Nielsen ratings alongside Futurama, The Ellen Show, and Star Trek: Enterprise. The pilot and "Tempest" were selected in The Futon Critic's 50 best episodes of 2001 and 2002, respectively. The pilot placed 31st, while "Tempest" placed 15th.
Often, the show would beat its lead-in, Gilmore Girls (which saw a 60% surge in its new timeslot) in the ratings. Towards the end of the season, it was \#1 with viewers under 35 in the ratings, which beat Frasier, Scrubs, and 24.
The season received mostly favorable reviews. IGN's Jeremy Conrad, who was initially against the idea of "reimagining" the Superman mythology, gave the first season a 7/10 rating. After reviewing the entire season, Conrad stated the first season of Smallville was "a solid start to what will be a great Superman TV series". Entertainment Weekly's Bruce Fretts believes the series might appear "corny" on the surface, but actually shows "subversively witty spin on the comic-book myths". Clint Morris, founder of Moviehole.net, stated that the series was "still finding its feet in season one", although, he commended the acting, citing specifically Michael Rosenbaum's "uncontrollably likeable Lex Luthor". The Free-Lance Star'''s Rob Hedelt commended the casting as well, comparing Welling's portrayal of a teenage Clark Kent to that of Christopher Reeve's portrayal in the films. Hedelt considered John Schneider and Annette O'Toole to be ideal picks for Jonathan and Martha Kent, but felt Allison Mack and Sam Jones III, important characters, were the weakest part of the ensemble. Judge Byun, of DVD Verdict, felt having Clark Kent and Lex Luthor start their relationship as best friends was a "brilliant concept" that moved the show past a "Dawson's Creek with super powers" tone the premise of the show suggested. Byun believes the first season had "solid writing and excellent performances", but is weakened by the freak of the week storylines that plagued the early episodes of the season; the season works best when the episodes focus on character development and not super powers.
Other critics were less enthusiastic about the season. Peter Bowes of BBC News felt the season was simply a "soap opera" with "pretty young people". Bowes believes the season suffered from the "sentimental boy-girl storyline", but that die-hard Superman fans would still be taken in by this incarnation of the character's early years. A common criticism for the first season was the use of "villain of the week" storylines. By the time the first seven episodes aired, at least one journalist had had enough of the villain of the week format. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Rob Owen wrote the series works best with its "character interaction and a nice performance by John Schneider as Pa Kent", but that the show needs more than the "'monster of the week' stories seen so far". Jordan Levin, president of The WB's Entertainment division, recognized the concerns that the show had become a villain of the week series. Levin announced that season two would see more "smaller mini-arcs over three to four episodes, to get away from some of the formulaic storytelling structure" the series has fallen into.
## Awards
By 2003, the first season had been nominated for and won various awards. It won an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series", and the pilot episode was nominated for "Outstanding Visual Effects for a Series". The pilot was recognized by other award organizations, receiving a Leo Award for "Best Visual Effects" in 2002. Peter Wunstorf was recognized for his work on the pilot with a nomination by the American Society of Cinematographers. Casting directors Deedee Bradley, Coreen Mayrs, and Barbara Miller were nominated for an Artios Award for their work on the pilot. Chris McGeary was nominated for Golden Reel's "Best Sound Editing in Television" award for his music editing on the pilot. The season one finale, "Tempest", was nominated for Golden Reel's "Best Sound Editing in Television Episodic" in 2003. In 2002, The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers honored the band Remy Zero (which provided the opening theme song for Smallville) and composer Mark Snow for their contributions to the show; the award recognized the composers of the theme or underscore of the highest rated television series during January 1 – December 31, 2001.
Several members of the regular cast were nominated for awards. In 2001, Rosenbaum, Kreuk, and Welling were nominated for Saturn Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series, Best Actress, and Best Actor, respectively. Rosenbaum and Kreuk received additional nominations for male and female Cinescape Genre Face of the Future awards, and the entire season was nominated for Best Network Television Series. Rosenbaum was the only one to win an award (Best Supporting Actor). Tom Welling won the Teen Choice Award for Choice Breakout TV Star—Male in 2002. Smallville's first season placed sixth on the Parents Television Council's list of the "best shows for families".
## Home media release
The complete first season of Smallville'' was released on September 23, 2003 in North America. Additional releases in regions 2 and 4 took place on October 13 and December 3, 2003, respectively. The DVD box set included various special features, including episode commentary, an interactive tour of Smallville, and storyboards from select episodes.
|
570,307 |
Be Here Now (album)
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1997 studio album by Oasis
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[
"1997 albums",
"Albums produced by Owen Morris",
"Creation Records albums",
"Epic Records albums",
"Oasis (band) albums"
] |
Be Here Now is the third studio album by English rock band Oasis, released on 21 August 1997 by Creation Records. The album was recorded at multiple recording studios in London, including Abbey Road Studios, as well as Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey. Although most tracks retain the anthemic quality of previous releases, the songs on Be Here Now are longer and contain many guitar overdubs. Noel Gallagher said this was done to make the album sound as "colossal" as possible. The album cover features a shot of the band members at Stocks House in Hertfordshire. It is the last Oasis studio album to feature founding members guitarist Paul "Bonehead" Arthurs and bassist Paul "Guigsy" McGuigan as the two left in 1999.
Following the worldwide success of their first two albums, Definitely Maybe (1994) and (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995), the album was highly anticipated. Oasis' management company, Ignition, were aware of the dangers of overexposure, and before release sought to control media access to the album. The campaign included limiting pre-release radio airplay and forcing journalists to sign gag orders. The tactics alienated the press and many industry personnel connected with the band and fuelled large-scale speculation and publicity within the British music scene.
Preceded by the lead single "D'You Know What I Mean?", Be Here Now was an instant commercial success, becoming the fastest-selling album in British chart history and topping the albums chart in 15 countries. It was the biggest selling album of 1997 in the UK, with 1.47 million units sold that year. As of 2016, the album has sold eight million copies worldwide. It has been certified 6× Platinum in the UK and Platinum in the US, being Oasis' third and final Platinum album in the country.
According to co-producer Owen Morris, the recording sessions were marred by arguments and drug abuse, and the band's only motivations were commercial. While initial reception for Be Here Now was overwhelmingly positive, retrospective reviews have been more negative, with many calling it bloated and over-produced. The band members have had differing views of the album, with Noel severely criticising it and Liam Gallagher highly praising it and even declaring it as his favourite Oasis album in a 2017 interview. Critic Jon Savage would later pinpoint the album as the end of the Britpop movement. In 2016, the album was reissued with bonus tracks, including a new remix of "D'You Know What I Mean?".
## Background
By the summer of 1996, Oasis were widely considered, according to guitarist Noel Gallagher, "the biggest band in the world ... bigger than, dare I say it, fucking God." The commercial success of their previous two albums had resulted in media frenzy in danger of leading to a backlash.
Earlier that year, Oasis members holidayed with Johnny Depp and Kate Moss in Mick Jagger's villa in Mustique. During their last stay on the island, Noel wrote the majority of the songs that would make up Be Here Now. He had suffered from writer's block during the previous winter, and said he wrote only a single guitar riff in the six months following the release of (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. Eventually, he disciplined himself to a routine of songwriting where he would go "into this room in the morning, come out for lunch, go back in, come out for dinner, go back in, then go to bed." Noel said "most of the songs were written before I even got a record deal, I went away and wrote the lyrics in about two weeks." Oasis producer Owen Morris joined Gallagher later with a TASCAM 8-track recorder, and they recorded demos with a drum machine and a keyboard.
In August 1996, Oasis performed two concerts before crowds of 250,000 at Knebworth House, Hertfordshire; more than 2,500,000 fans had applied for tickets. The dates were to be the zenith of Oasis's popularity, and both the music press and the band realised it would not be possible for the band to equal the event. By this time, infighting had broken out in the band. On 23 August 1996, vocalist Liam Gallagher refused to sing for an MTV Unplugged performance at London's Royal Festival Hall, pleading a sore throat. He attended the concert and heckled Noel from the upper balcony. Four days later, Liam declined to participate in the first leg of an American tour, complaining that he needed to buy a house with his then-girlfriend Patsy Kensit. He rejoined the band a few days after for a key concert at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York, but intentionally sang off-key and spat beer and saliva during the performance.
Amongst much internal bickering, the tour continued to Charlotte, North Carolina, where Noel finally lost his patience with Liam and announced he was leaving the band. He said later: "If the truth be known, I didn't want to be there anyway. I wasn't prepared to be in the band if people were being like that to each other." Noel rejoined Oasis a few weeks later, but the band's management and handlers were worried. With an album's worth of songs already demoed, the Gallaghers felt that they should record as soon as possible. Their manager, Marcus Russell, said in 2007 that "in retrospect, we went in the studio too quickly. The smart move would have been to take the rest of the year off. But at the time it seemed like the right thing to do. If you're a band and you've got a dozen songs you think are great, why not go and do it."
In 2006, Noel agreed that the band should have separated for a year or two instead of going into the studio. However, Morris later wrote: "It was a mistake on everyone's part, management very much included, that we didn’t record Be Here Now in the summer of 1996. It would have been a much different album: happy probably." He described the Mustique demos as "the last good recordings I did with Noel", and said his relationship soured following the Knebworth concert.
## Recording and production
Recording began on 7 October 1996 at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London. Morris described the first week as "fucking awful", and suggested to Noel that they abandon the session: "He just shrugged and said it would be all right. So on we went." Liam was under heavy tabloid focus at the time, and on 9 November 1996 was arrested and cautioned for cocaine possession at the Q Awards. A media frenzy ensued, and the band's management made the decision to move to a studio less readily accessible to paparazzi. Sun showbiz editor Dominic Mohan recalled: "We had quite a few Oasis contacts on the payroll. I don't know whether any were drug dealers, but there was always a few dodgy characters about."
Oasis's official photographer Jill Furmanovsky felt the media's focus, and was preyed upon by tabloid journalists living in the flat upstairs from her: "They thought I had the band hiding in my flat." In paranoia, Oasis cut themselves off from their wider circle. According to Johnny Hopkins, the publicist of Oasis's label Creation Records, "People were being edged out of the circle around Oasis. People who knew them before they were famous rather than because they were famous." Hopkins likened the situation to a medieval court, complete with kings, courtiers and jesters, and said: "Once you're in that situation you lose sight of reality."
On 11 November 1996, Oasis relocated to the rural Ridge Farm Studio in Surrey. Though they reconvened with more energy, the early recordings were compromised by the drug intake of all involved. Morris recalled that "in the first week, someone tried to score an ounce of weed, but instead got an ounce of cocaine. Which kind of summed it up." Noel was not present during any of Liam's vocal track recordings. Morris thought that the new material was weak, but when he voiced his opinion to Noel he was cut down: "[So] I just carried on shovelling drugs up my nose." Morris had initially wanted to just transfer the Mustique demo recordings and overdub drums, vocals, and rhythm guitar, but the 8-track mixer he had employed required him to bounce tracks for overdubs, leaving him unable to remove the drum machine from the recordings.
Noel, wanting to make the album as dense and "colossal" feeling as possible, layered multiple guitar tracks on several songs. In many instances he dubbed ten channels with identical guitar parts, in an effort to create a sonic volume. Creation's owner Alan McGee visited the studio during the mixing stage; he said, "I used to go down to the studio, and there was so much cocaine getting done at that point ... Owen was out of control, and he was the one in charge of it. The music was just fucking loud." Morris responded: "Alan McGee was the head of the record company. Why didn’t he do something about the 'out of control' record producer"? Obviously, the one not in control was the head of the record company." He said that he and the band had been dealing with personal difficulties the day and night before McGee visited the studio.
## Songs
As with Oasis' previous two albums, the songs on Be Here Now are generally anthemic. The structures are traditional, and largely follow the typical verse – chorus – verse – chorus – middle eight – chorus format of guitar-based rock music. Reviewing for Nude as the News, Jonathan Cohen noted that the album is "virtually interchangeable with 1994's Definitely Maybe or its blockbuster sequel, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?", while Noel had previously remarked that he would make three albums in this generic style. Yet the songs on Be Here Now differ in that they are longer than previous releases; an extended coda brings "D'You Know What I Mean?" to almost eight minutes, while "All Around the World" contains three key changes and lasts for a full nine minutes. When "D'You Know What I Mean?" was released as the album's first single, Noel Gallagher expected to be asked to reduce the length of the song by two minutes. However, nobody had the courage.
The tracks are more layered and intricate than before, and each contains multiple guitar overdubs. While Morris had previously stripped away layers of overdubs on the band's debut Definitely Maybe, during the production of Be Here Now he "seemed to gleefully encourage" such excess; "My Big Mouth" has an estimated thirty tracks of guitar overdubbed onto the song. A Rolling Stone review described the guitar lines as composed of "elementary riffs."
There was some experimentation: "D'You Know What I Mean?" contains a slowed down loop from N.W.A's "Straight Outta Compton", while "Magic Pie" features psychedelically arranged vocal harmonies and a mellotron. According to Noel, "All I did was run my elbows across the keys and this mad jazz came out and everyone laughed." The album's production is dominated by top-end high frequency tones, and according to Uncut's Paul Lester, its use of treble is reminiscent of both late 1980s Creation Records bands such as My Bloody Valentine, and the Stooges' famously under-produced Raw Power (1973).
The vocal melodies continue Noel's preference for "massed-rank sing-alongs", although Paul Du Noyer concedes that not all are of the "pub-trashing idiot kind" of previous releases. At the time of release, Q's Phil Sutcliffe summarised the lyrics of Be Here Now as a mixture of "hookline optimism, a swarm of Beatles and other '60s references, a gruff love song to Meg, and further tangled expressions of his inability/unwillingness to express profound emotions." David Fricke found the numerous Beatles references, including the line "The Fool on the Hill and I Feel Fine" from "D'You Know What I Mean?" and "Sing a song for me, one from Let It Be" on the title track as lazy songwriting from Noel. Reviewers have also found Beatles references in the music, on tracks such as "All Around the World", which has been compared to the sing-along qualities of "Hey Jude" and "All You Need Is Love".
The lyrics were elsewhere described as "[running] the gamut from insightful to insipid", although Du Noyer admitted that Noel is "[to go by his lyrics] something of a closet philosopher ... and often romantic to the point of big girl's blousedom." While the tracks "Don't Go Away" and "The Girl in the Dirty Shirt" were described as unabashedly sentimental, Du Noyer went on to observe that "there is compassion and sensitivity in these tracks that is not the work of oafs." Du Noyer conceded that Noel often tied himself up in "cosmic knots", but had "written words that sound simple and true, and are therefore poetic without trying to be." Lester read song titles such as "Stand by Me" and "Don't Go Away" as a series of demands, both to members of his private life and his public audience.
Du Noyer praised Liam's vocal contributions and described his "Northern punk whine" as "the most distinctive individual style of our time." Lester alluded to Liam as Noel's "mouthpiece", although he qualified that Liam is the "voice of every working-class boy with half a yen to break out and make it big."
## Album cover
The cover image was shot in April 1997 at Stocks House in Hertfordshire, the former home of Victor Lownes, head of the Playboy Clubs in the UK until 1981. It shows the band standing by the swimming pool outside the hotel, surrounded by various props. For the photo shoot, a white 1972 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow was lowered into the swimming pool and half submerged in the water.
Photographer Michael Spencer Jones said the original concept involved shooting each band member in various locations around the world, but when the cost proved prohibitive, the shoot was relocated to Stocks House. Spencer remarked that the shoot "degenerated into chaos", adding that "by 8 pm, everyone was in the bar, there were schoolkids all over the set, and the lighting crew couldn't start the generator. It was Alice in Wonderland meets Apocalypse Now." Critics have tried to read into the selection of the cover props, but Johns said Gallagher simply selected items from the BBC props store he thought would look good in the picture. Two props considered were an inflatable globe (intended as a homage to the sleeve of Definitely Maybe) and the Rolls-Royce, suggested by Arthurs.
Jones has said that the partially submerged Rolls-Royce was in reference to Keith Moon's oft-fabled sinking of a Lincoln Continental into a hotel swimming pool in 1967. The release date in each region was commemorated on the calendar pictured on the sleeve; Harris said the dating "[encouraged] fans to believe that to buy a copy on the day it appeared was to participate in some kind of historical event." The album cover also spurred controversy from a legal viewpoint. In the case of Creation Records Ltd v. News Group Newspapers Ltd, the court decided that the collection of objects brought together for the album cover was insufficient in creating an artwork that could be protected by copyright.
## Release
### Promotion
When Alan McGee, Creation's publicist Johnny Hopkins, and marketing executive Emma Greengrass first heard Be Here Now at Noel Gallagher's house, each had their doubts about its artistic value, but kept their doubts to themselves. One Creation employee recalled "a lot of nodding of heads, a lot of slapping of backs." McGee later admitted to having strong misgivings at first: "I heard it in the studio and I remember saying 'We'll only sell seven million copies' ... I thought it was too confrontational." However, in an interview with the music press a few days later he predicted the album would sell twenty million copies. McGee's hyperbole alarmed both Oasis and their management company Ignition, and both immediately excluded him from involvement in the release campaign. Ignition's strategy from that point on centred on an effort to suppress all publicity, and withheld access to both music and information from anybody not directly involved with the album's release. Fearful of the dangers of over-hype and bootlegging, their aim was to present the record as a "regular, everyday collection of tunes." To this end they planned a modest marketing budget, to be spent on subdued promotional activities such as street posters and music press adverts, while avoiding mainstream instruments such as billboard and TV advertising. According to Greengrass "We want to keep it low key. We want to keep control of the whole mad thing."
However, the extent that Ignition were willing to go to control access to the album generated more hype than could normally have been expected, and served to alienate members of both the print and broadcast media, as well as most Creation staff members. When "D'You Know What I Mean?" was planned as the first single, Ignition decided on a late release to radio so as to avoid too much advance exposure. However, three stations broke the embargo, and Ignition panicked. According to Greengrass: "we'd been in these bloody bunker meetings for six months or something, and our plot was blown. 'Shit, it's a nightmare'." BBC Radio 1 received a CD containing three songs ten days before the album's release, on condition that disc jockey Steve Lamacq talked over the tracks to prevent illegal copies being made by listeners. The day after Lamacq previewed the album on his show, he received a phone call from Ignition informing him that he would not be able to preview further tracks because he didn't speak enough over the songs. Lamacq said, "I had to go on the air the next night and say, 'Sorry, but we're not getting any more tracks.' It was just absurd." According to Creation's head of marketing John Andrews, "[The campaign] made people despise Oasis within Creation. You had this Oasis camp that was like 'I'm sorry, you're not allowed come into the office between the following hours. You're not allowed mention the word Oasis.' It was like a fascist state." One employee recalled an incident "when somebody came round to check our phones because they thought The Sun had tapped them."
When Hopkins began to circulate cassette copies of the album to the music press a few weeks later, he required that each journalist sign a contract containing a clause requiring that the cassette recipient, according to Select journalist Mark Perry, "not discuss the album with anyone—including your partner at home. It basically said don't talk to your girlfriend about it when you're at home in bed." Reflecting in 1999, Greengrass admitted: "In retrospect a lot of the things we did were ridiculous. We sit in [Oasis] meetings today and we're like 'It's on the Internet. It's in Camden Market. Whatever'. I think we've learned our lesson." According to Perry: "It seemed, particularly once you heard the album, that this was cocaine grandeur of just the most ludicrous degree. I remember listening to "All Around the World" and laughing—actually quite pleasurably—because it seemed so ridiculous. You just thought: Christ, there is so much coke being done here."
### Commercial performance
Be Here Now was released in the UK on 21 August 1997. The release date had been brought forward out of Ignition's fear that import copies of the album from the United States would arrive in Britain before the street date. Worrying that TV news cameras would interview queuing fans at a traditional midnight opening session, Ignition forced retailers to sign contracts pledging not to sell the record earlier than 8:00am. However, the cameras arrived regardless, just in time to record the initially slow trade. It was not until lunch time that sales picked up. By the end of the first day of release, Be Here Now sold over 424,000 units and by the end of business on Saturday that week sales had reached 663,389, making it based on first seven days sales, the fastest-selling album in British history. The album became their highest charting release in the US by debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 chart. However, its first week sales of 152,000—below expected sales of 400,000 copies—were considered a disappointment.
Be Here Now was the biggest selling album of 1997 in the UK, with 1.47 million units sold that year. By the end of 1997, Be Here Now had sold eight million units worldwide. However, most sales came from the first two weeks of release, and once the album was released to UK radio stations the turnover tapered off. Buyers realised that the album was not another (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, and by 1999, Melody Maker reported that it was the album most sold to second-hand record stores. It has been certified 7× Platinum in the UK and Platinum in the US, being Oasis' third and final Platinum album in the country. As of 2016, the album had sold over eight million copies worldwide. Four of the album's 12 tracks were released as singles: "D'You Know What I Mean?", "Stand By Me", "All Around the World" and "Don't Go Away". In 2016, following the album's reissue and the release of the documentary Oasis: Supersonic, the album topped the UK Vinyl Albums Chart, 19 years after its original release.
## Critical reception
### Initial response
Initial reviews of Be Here Now were, in John Harris's words, unanimous with "truly amazing praise". According to Harris, "To find an album that had attracted gushing notices in such profusion, one had to go back thirty years, to the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." While Q described the album as "cocaine set to music", most early reviews praised the record's length, volume and ambition, including Charles Shaar Murray, who called it the "Oasis World Domination Album" in Mojo. David Fricke of Rolling Stone complimented the song formula throughout the album, writing that it "pays off". However, as a whole, he felt the album was "music built for impact, not explanation". Dele Fadele of Vox describes it as "a veritable rock'n'roll monsoon of an album; a giant jigsaw puzzle, an elemental force, a monster that cannot and will not be contained."
Reviews in the British music press for (What's the Story) Morning Glory? had been generally negative. When it went on to become, in the words of Select editor Alexis Petridis, "this huge kind of zeitgeist-defining record", the music press was "baffled". Petridis believed the initial glowing reviews of Be Here Now were a concession to public opinion. In America, reviews were equally positive. Reviewing for the Chicago Sun-Times on release, Jae-Ha Kim considered the album as good as its two predecessors, writing: "The 12 tracks on Be Here Now aren't as immediately accessible as Oasis' earlier hits "Wonderwall" or "Live Forever". But the pop songs are mesmerising in their intense delivery and clean execution." Elysa Gardner offered similar in the Los Angeles Times, finding that with Be Here Now, the band grew more ambitious and succeeded without losing ground, although Gardner noted the "taut pop craftsmanship" that distinguished the band's two predecessors was "less prominent".
Nevertheless, the album did receive some mixed reviews on release. In Entertainment Weekly, David Browne stated: "Much of the album is a messy, mucky keg o' sound that constantly threatens to spill over and drown Noel's innately melodic songs." He further criticised the overtly-cluttered mix and overlong songs. Nevertheless, he concluded: "They sound more ferocious and confident than ever, yet less intimate, more distanced." Similarly, Simon Williams called it "one of the daftest records ever made" in NME. Likewise, Chris Norris criticised the lyrical content in Spin magazine, calling most of the lyrics on the record "meaningless". Ryan Schreiber of Pitchfork favourably compared the record to its two predecessors, finding that instead of "unforgettable three- to- four minute pop slices", there are now "six- to- ten minute long epics." Be Here Now proved divisive among Planet Sound readers, who voted the album their "most loathed" of 1997, as well as their second-favourite of the year.
### Retrospective appraisal
Retrospectively, reception to Be Here Now has been more negative, with many calling it bloated and over-produced. Reviewing in 2002, Stephen Thompson of The A.V. Club felt that although there were good tracks present, naming "My Big Mouth", "Don't Go Away" and "Stand By Me", the majority suffered from "cumbersome overlength", feeling that the band's attempt to make a "grand, career-defining statement" backfired. In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Rob Sheffield described the record as "a concept album about how long all the songs were", comparing it to Elton John's Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (1975). Although he offered praise to the title track and "It's Getting Better (Man!!)", he considered the album to be the work of a songwriter who has "turn[ed] his brain [in]to cocaine crispies". In a more positive review, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic calls Be Here Now a "triumphant" record that "steamrolls over any criticism", praising Liam's vocal performances as his finest up to that point, as well as the songs as "intensely enjoyable" and "impossibly catchy". However, he felt that Noel's songwriting wasn't innovative compared to its predecessors. In 2020, Luke Holland of The Guardian described the album as a "flawed masterpiece."
The album's 2016 reissue attracted a number of reviews, with most continuing to criticise the album's production and song lengths. Laura Snapes of Pitchfork calls Be Here Now "one of the most agonizing listening experiences in pop music", amplified by the "bloated and indulgent" remaster. Snapes further panned Noel's decision to only remix "D'You Know What I Mean?", concluding that there was no point in reissuing the album if its creators didn't care enough. She ultimately states, "this turgid collection is the ultimate expression of Be Here Now: as bloated and indulgent as the record itself, the music a secondary concern to the product’s status". In Drowned in Sound, Andrzej Lukowski felt that when compared to the band's earlier work, Be Here Now lacked "aspirational rock 'n' roll swagger" besides a few tracks. Lukowski also agreed that a complete remix of the album would have been beneficial, considering "D'You Know What I Mean?" needed it "the least". In Clash magazine, Clarke Geddes was more positive, agreeing that although the album was bloated and over-produced, it still offered highlights, naming "I Hope, I Think, I Know". He also positively appraised the bonus tracks in the box set, believing fans will be satisfied with the extra material.
## Legacy
In the 2003 John Dower-directed documentary Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop, music critic Jon Savage pinpointed Be Here Now as the moment where the Britpop movement ended. Savage said that while the album "isn't the great disaster that everybody says", he noted that "[i]t was supposed to be the big, big triumphal record" of the period. Q expressed similar sentiments, writing, "So colossally did Be Here Now fall short of expectations that it killed Britpop and ushered in an era of more ambitious, less overblown music." Irish Times journalist Brian Boyd wrote: "Bloated and over-heated (much like the band themselves at the time), the album has all that dreadful braggadocio that is so characteristic of a cocaine user." Reflecting in 2007, Garry Mulholland said: "The fact that nothing could have lived up to the fevered expectations that surrounded its release doesn't change the facts. The third Oasis album is a loud, lumbering noise signifying nothing." When reviewing in 2016, Lukowski wrote that although Oasis as a band would continue, Oasis as a legend died with Be Here Now. He further states that while other Britpop bands such as Pulp and Blur moved on from the genre, Oasis continued attempting to revisit the success of their first two albums, effectively becoming a "nostalgia act" after 1997.
The Gallagher brothers hold differing opinions about the album. In July 1997, Noel was describing the production as "bland" and some tracks as "fucking shit". He later said: "Just because you sell lots of records, it doesn't mean to say you're any good. Look at Phil Collins." In Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop, he dismissed the album, and said that drugs and the band's indifference during recording led to the album having faults. In the same documentary, Liam defended the record, and said that "at that time we thought it was fucking great, and I still think it's great. It just wasn't Morning Glory." In 2006, Liam said of Noel, "If he didn't like the record that much, he shouldn't have put the fucking record out in the first place ... I don't know what's up with him but it's a top record, man, and I'm proud of it—it's just a little bit long." In 2018, the BBC included it in their list of "the acclaimed albums that nobody listens to any more." Noel has observed that many Oasis fans still hold the album in high regard, as do prominent musicians such as Marilyn Manson. In 2017, Liam ranked the album as his favourite release by Oasis.
The album was reissued in several limited-edition formats, including silver-coloured double heavyweight vinyl, a double picture disc and cassette, on 19 August 2022 to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The reissue was promoted with new lyric videos for "D'You Know What I Mean? (NG's 2016 Rethink)" and "Stand by Me".
## Track listing
### 2016 reissue
As part of a promotional campaign entitled Chasing the Sun, the album was re-released on 14 October 2016. The three-disc deluxe edition includes remastered versions of the album and seven B-sides from the album's three UK singles. Bonus content includes demos, the Mustique sessions, live tracks, and a 2016 remix of "D'You Know What I Mean?" Noel Gallagher was supposed to remix the entire album but later decided against it.
## Personnel
Album credits per the album's liner notes.
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications
|
36,745,171 |
Frank's Cock
| 1,167,794,911 |
1993 short film by Mike Hoolboom
|
[
"1990s Canadian films",
"1990s English-language films",
"1993 LGBT-related films",
"1993 films",
"1993 independent films",
"Canadian LGBT-related short films",
"Canadian drama short films",
"Canadian independent films",
"Collage film",
"English-language Canadian films",
"Films directed by Mike Hoolboom",
"HIV/AIDS in Canadian films"
] |
Frank's Cock is a 1993 Canadian short film written and directed by Mike Hoolboom. The eight-minute production stars Callum Keith Rennie as an unnamed narrator who discusses his relationship with his partner, Frank. The two met while the narrator was a teenager and spent nearly ten years together. Frank has since been diagnosed with AIDS, and the narrator fears his death. The story was based on the experience of one of Hoolboom's friends at People With AIDS, which Hoolboom adapted after receiving a commission to create a short film about breaking up.
Shot on a low budget, the work is shown in a split-screen format with interspersed scenes from popular culture, gay pornography, and human embryo formation; this format is meant to symbolise the "fragmentation of the body" experienced by AIDS sufferers. Produced by Alex Mackenzie, Frank's Cock was critically acclaimed and won several awards, including the NFB–John Spotton Award for best Canadian short film at the 1994 Toronto International Film Festival. The script has been republished several times and has inspired a short on LGBT issues in Canada's native community.
## Synopsis
An unnamed narrator (Callum Keith Rennie), who as a teenager intended to be the "Michael Jordan of sex" or "Wayne Gretzky with a hard-on", discusses how he met and fell in love with an older man named Frank. After the two met at a group sex session, they began an older brother–younger brother fantasy and moved in together. Frank has a voracious sexual appetite and, at times, invites the narrator for whole-day sex sessions. He is a tender lover, teaching his partner how to fly a box kite and cooking omelettes for him. The narrator is pleased with Frank's attentions and their sexual experimentation, although he is initially confused by Frank's insistence on listening to Peter Gzowski's Morningside during sex. As their ten-year anniversary approaches, Frank – having lost much weight and developed Kaposi's sarcomas – has been diagnosed with AIDS, leaving the narrator stunned; he concludes the narration with "I'm going to miss him. He was the best friend I ever had."
## Production
The Canadian director Mike Hoolboom was diagnosed with HIV in 1988 or 1989, after going to donate blood. In a 1993 interview, he stated that he felt himself working harder after the diagnosis, finishing films at a more rapid rate because he was uncertain how long he would live. Hoolboom also became "fascinated with a body of parts spliced and spliced again", experimenting with "interruptive rhythms" as a way to reexamine simple acts. Having previously focused on films about the body, Hoolboom began dealing heavily with fragmentation, HIV/AIDS, and situations faced by those with the virus; Frank's Cock was his first venture directly addressing the AIDS issue.
While living in Vancouver, Hoolboom joined the local People With AIDS (PWA) group. There he befriended a man (Joey in some sources, Alan in others) whose partner was dying of AIDS. Upon his friend's suggestion, Hoolboom began work on a script for "a real movie": one which portrayed an AIDS patient as full of love, not one that showed the patient's friends abandoning him. The friend was, however, unwilling to appear in the film. In writing the script Hoolboom tried to keep elements of humour; he later said that the humour was necessary as the source had insisted "most of our relationship was incredibly joyous and happy and a good time".
After receiving a commission to make a short film for the Vancouver-based cooperative Cineworks, Hoolboom began working on realising the script with a low budget and limited amount of 16 mm film from the National Film Board of Canada; he was one of seven artists commissioned to "spark local production" with short films on breakup, which were ultimately included in the omnibus Breaking Up. Rennie – at that time a relative unknown – agreed to deliver the monologue. Hoolboom was pleased with the results, writing that Rennie presented the monologue as if "he'd been living this story all along." The majority of the technical work, including direction, cinematography, and editing, was handled by Hoolboom; Alex Mackenzie, working for Cineworks, produced the film.
Part of the terms of his grant were that Hoolboom was allowed a limited number of edits (one or three). After pondering how to complete the film under such terms, Hoolboom chose to use no edits. He recorded previously edited footage, some appropriated from various sources, through a hole in a piece of cardboard, producing a single quadrant; he repeated this process three times, using the same film, which resulted in four quadrants with four different images. Production was completed by early 1993, and in screenings Frank's Cock was marketed as an "extremely explicit" experimental film.
Although societal awareness of AIDS had developed at a slower pace in Canada than in the United States, films regarding the disease had appeared nearly concurrently: both the first Canadian documentary and the first American feature-length film on the subject, Nik Sheehan's No Sad Songs and John Erman's An Early Frost respectively, were released in 1985. However, the majority of the early gay artists with AIDS had died by the time Hoolboom made Frank's Cock; as such, the film scholar Thomas Waugh considers Hoolboom a second-generation figurehead in AIDS activism and one of the earliest not coming from the gay community.
## Style
Frank's Cock divides the screen into quadrants, with the majority of the film focusing on the upper-right corner of the screen. In this panel, Rennie's character gives a monologue, which is sometimes illustrated by images in other panels: the lower-right panel flashes scenes of hardcore gay pornography, the upper-left shows scenes representing human embryo formation, while the lower-left flashes excerpts from popular art. Aside from the original footage of Rennie, the short appropriated clips from the Nova episode "The Miracle of Life", the gay pornographic film The Best of Blondes, and the music video for Madonna's 1992 song "Erotica". The effect was later reused in Hoolboom's 1997 short Positiv.
Janis Cole, writing for Point of View, described the split-screen effect as supporting the text while "creating an optical treatment purposefully grounded in both dream and reality", as elements show out of sync. Jeff Rush and Cynthia Baughman, writing in the Journal of Film and Video, described the film as showing that "text can reverse the traditional balance of words = abstractions/images = the concrete" through the creation of vivid, perhaps disturbing, word pictures which serve as tangible images contrasted with the faint abstractions which are the actual images. Jack Rusholme, prefacing a retrospective of Hoolboom's works by Experimenta Media Arts, wrote that the split-screen evokes the effects of AIDS, in which "the body [is] broken into dispersed vantages", while the narration serves to "bind with words what this disease will render lifeless and inert". In a 1994 interview, Hoolboom stated that his intent was to represent the "fragmentation of the body" experienced by AIDS sufferers.
## Reception
Frank's Cock has received warm critical reviews, both in Canada and abroad. Cole called it an "extraordinary experimental documentary" that is "as bold as the title implies" and a strong argument for the widespread dissemination of short films. Waugh placed Frank's Cock as one of a "great AIDS triptych", together with Hoolboom's later works Letters from Home (1996) and Positiv. The Canadian film scholar Darell Varga wrote that the film is an "emotionally riveting" eulogy to the loss of love. Karen Tisch, writing in Take One, found that the short built its emotional power "delicately but steadily"; she suggested that its Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) win was well-deserved.
Reviewing for the Western Australian independent film magazine In the Picture, James Twentyman wrote that the film was "relatively straightforward" but strong and provocative, emphasising the "soul-baring" nature of the monologue. Rush and Baughman found that the short took the narrative voice beyond what is mainstream, demonstrating "the power of word and image", while Rusholme described Frank's Cock as Hoolboom's "most explicit AIDS narrative". The Swiss film festival Viper touted the short as expressing humour and sexual obsession in the face of a plague.
Hoolboom has stated that he felt the film was accessible to both gay or straight audiences, which should "open them up to differences of form and why [one] would make something formally different." Waugh suggested that this was successful, as in his experience audiences often cried at screenings.
## Legacy
Frank's Cock won several awards at domestic and international film festivals. At the 1994 TIFF it won the NFB–John Spotton Award, given for the best Canadian short film. The jury cited Frank's Cock for its "evocative images, ... impeccable writing and mise-en-scène, ... moving depiction of the universal human experiences of love and loss in the age of AIDS, and especially for its success in shaking our preconceptions". The selection included C\$2,500 in prize money and a further C\$2,500 worth of film processing. When accepting the award, Hoolboom quipped "Frank's Cock has never seemed so large"; Waugh, however, suggests that the title "caused more embarrassment than mirth" when it was read during the citation. Special citations were also read for Andrew Munger's Make Some Noise and Philip Hoffman's Technilogic Ordering.
That year the film won a Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival in Locarno, Switzerland. At the Ann Arbor Film Festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Frank's Cock won Best Dramatic Film. The Canadian Filmmakers' Distribution Centre, which has distribution rights for the film, notes further awards at the Interfilm Festival in Berlin and Second Prize Experimental at the Big Muddy Film Festival in Carbondale, Illinois (both 1995), while Hoolboom records Frank's Cock as receiving an honourable mention at the University of Oregon's Queer Film Fest (1994).
The script for Frank's Cock has been published several times, including in the script anthology By the Skin of Their Tongues and in the Journal of Film and Video (both 1997). The film influenced Adam Garnet Jones' Secret Weapons (2008), commissioned by the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre in celebration of its fortieth anniversary. However, unlike Frank's Cock, Secret Weapons focused on an LGBT identity within Canada's native community.
After his success at the TIFF, Hoolboom directed numerous further films, many showing a "fascination with its impermanence"; several, including Letters From Home, dealt explicitly with AIDS. Rennie, who had also received critical acclaim for his supporting role in Mina Shum's Double Happiness (1994), later became known for playing villains in Hollywood films.
## See also
- HIV/AIDS in Canada
- LGBT culture
- LGBT in Canada
- Misconceptions about HIV/AIDS
|
315,540 |
Meshuggah
| 1,171,078,814 |
Swedish extreme metal band
|
[
"1987 establishments in Sweden",
"Avant-garde metal musical groups",
"Extreme metal musical groups",
"Groove metal musical groups",
"Meshuggah",
"Musical groups established in 1987",
"Musical quintets",
"Nuclear Blast artists",
"Swedish progressive metal musical groups",
"Swedish technical death metal musical groups",
"Swedish thrash metal musical groups"
] |
Meshuggah (/məˈʃʊɡə/) is a Swedish extreme metal band formed in Umeå in 1987. The band's current lineup consists of lead vocalist Jens Kidman, guitarists Fredrik Thordendal and Mårten Hagström, drummer Tomas Haake and bassist Dick Lövgren. Since its formation, the band has released nine studio albums, six EPs and eight music videos. Their latest studio album, Immutable, was released in April 2022 via Atomic Fire Records.
Meshuggah has become known for their innovative musical style and their complex, polymetered song structures and polyrhythms. They rose to fame as a significant act in extreme underground music, became an influence for modern metal bands, and gained a cult following. The band was labelled as one of the ten most important hard rock and heavy metal bands by Rolling Stone and as the most important band in metal by Alternative Press. In the late 2000s, the band was an inspiration for the djent subgenre.
In 2006 and 2009, Meshuggah was nominated for two Swedish Grammis Awards for their albums Catch Thirtythree and obZen, respectively. In 2018, the band was nominated for a Grammy Award for their song "Clockworks" under the "Best Metal Performance" category. The band has performed in various international festivals, including Ozzfest and Download, and embarked on the obZen world tour from 2008 to 2010, and also the "Ophidian Trek".
## History
### Formation and Contradictions Collapse (1987–1994)
In 1985, guitarist Fredrik Thordendal formed a band in Umeå, a university town in northern Sweden with a population of 105,000. The band, originally named Metallien, recorded a number of demo tapes, after which it disbanded. Thordendal, however, continued playing under a different name with new band members.
Meshuggah was formed in 1987 by lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Jens Kidman, and took the name Meshuggah from the Yiddish word for "crazy" (ultimately derived from the Hebrew word ). Kidman found the word in an American street slang dictionary. The band recorded several demos before Kidman left, which prompted the remaining members to disband. Kidman then formed a new band, Calipash, with guitarist Thordendal, bassist Peter Nordin and drummer Niklas Lundgren. Kidman, who also played guitar, and Thordendal decided to restore the name Meshuggah for the new band.
In 1989, Meshuggah released the self-titled, three-song EP Meshuggah, which is commonly known as Psykisk Testbild (a title that could be translated as "Psychological Test-Picture"). This 12" (30 cm) vinyl EP had only 1,000 copies released, sold by local record store Garageland. The EP's back cover features the band members with cheese doodles on their faces.
After replacing drummer Niklas Lundgren with Tomas Haake in 1990, Meshuggah signed a contract with German heavy metal record label Nuclear Blast and recorded its debut full-length album, Contradictions Collapse. The LP, originally entitled (All this because of) Greed, was released in 1991. The album received positive reviews, but was not a commercial success. Soon after, Kidman decided to concentrate on vocals, and guitarist Mårten Hagström, who had already played in a band with Haake when they were in sixth grade, was recruited. The new lineup recorded the EP None at Tonteknik Recordings in Umeå in 1994 for release later that year. A Japanese version was also released, including lyrics printed in Japanese.
During this period, Thordendal, who was working as a carpenter, severed the tip of his left middle finger, while Haake injured his hand in a router accident. As a result, the band was unable to perform for several months. Thordendal's fingertip was later reattached, and he went on to make a full recovery. The Selfcaged EP was recorded in April and May 1994, but its release was delayed to later in 1995 due to the accidents.
### Destroy Erase Improve (1995–1997)
In January 1995, Meshuggah undertook a short European tour organized by its record label Nuclear Blast. Afterwards, the band returned to the studio in February of that year to record the album Destroy Erase Improve at Soundfront Studios in Uppsala, with Daniel Bergstrand as a producer. Shortly thereafter, the band went on a European tour supporting Machine Head for two months. During the tour, Nordin became ill and experienced balance disorder with his inner ear. Due to the resulting chronic dizziness and vertigo, Nordin was forced to leave the tour and travel to Sweden. Machine Head's bassist Adam Duce offered to cover his absence; however, Meshuggah decided to continue as a four-piece. Sometimes Thordendal played bass, while other times the band performed with two guitars. In this lineup, Hagström would use a pitch shifter to play his guitar at an octave lower than usual.
Destroy Erase Improve was released in May 1995, with positive response from critics for the "heady tempos and abstract approach". Kidman described the album cover: "The title fits the pictures we cut out and stole from reference books in the library."
In mid-1995, Meshuggah had a short tour with Swedish band Clawfinger in Scandinavia and Germany. Nordin had to leave the band because of his sickness and was replaced by bassist Gustaf Hielm during the tour. In late 1995, Meshuggah went on a month-long tour with Hypocrisy.
During 1996 and 1997, Thordendal worked on his solo album Sol Niger Within, which was released in March 1997 in Scandinavia and in April in Japan. He also hosted Mats/Morgan Band's debut. In 1997, Meshuggah recorded an unreleased demo, toured occasionally, and played a few concerts in its hometown. In May, Meshuggah moved to Stockholm to be closer to its management and the record industry in general.
The EP The True Human Design was recorded and released in late 1997. It contained one new song entitled "Sane", and one live and two alternate versions of Destroy Erase Improve's opening track "Future Breed Machine". Thordendal's solo album Sol Niger Within was simultaneously released in the United States, and Meshuggah started to plan its next album at the end of the year.
### Chaosphere and Nothing (1998–2002)
Hielm officially joined the band in January 1998 after more than two years as a session member. Nuclear Blast re-released Contradictions Collapse with the addition of songs from the None EP. In May 1998, the title of the next album, Chaosphere, was reported and recording was done throughout May and June. Immediately after recording the album, Meshuggah went on a short US tour, and the album was released later in November 1998. Chaosphere's sound is an almost complete departure from the thrash metal style of the band's previous releases. Shortly after the release, Meshuggah toured Scandinavia with Entombed.
In early 1999, Meshuggah joined Slayer on their U.S. tour. After the new album and the live performances, Meshuggah was beginning to be recognized by mainstream music, guitar, drum and metal magazines. In mid-1999, Meshuggah performed in several Swedish concerts. The band started to write some new material but reported in mid-2000 that "songwriting isn't that dramatic, but we're getting there slowly". While fans were waiting for the next album, a collection of demos (from the Psykisk Testbild EP), remixes and unreleased songs from the Chaosphere sessions were released as the Rare Trax album. Hielm left the band in July 2001 for unclear reasons. Meshuggah joined Tool on a lengthy tour, playing for more than 100,000 people total.
In March 2002, Meshuggah recorded three-track demos with programmed drums in their home studio, which were based on Haake's sample Drumkit from Hell. The upcoming album was recorded in five to six weeks in May and was produced by the band at Dug-Out Studios in Uppsala and at its home studio in Stockholm. The last-minute decision to join 2002's Ozzfest tour forced the band to mix the album in two days and master it in one. Meshuggah immediately went on another US tour after finishing the recording.
The album Nothing was released in August 2002, selling 6,525 copies during its first week in the US and reaching No. 165 on the Billboard 200. With this album, Meshuggah became the first band in the history of Nuclear Blast Records to crack the Billboard 200 and also became the first band signed to Nuclear Blast to be reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine. Meshuggah's previous two releases, 1998's Chaosphere and 1995's Destroy Erase Improve, had sold 38,773 and 30,712 copies to that date, respectively. The CD booklet of Nothing has no liner notes, lyrics, or credits, only a hint of one word: ingenting, which is Swedish for nothing. All of this information is available on the CD-ROM. At the end of 2002, the band went on another US tour with Tool and a headlining tour of its own.
### I and Catch Thirtythree (2003–2006)
In 2003, Hagström hinted at the direction of the band's next album by saying, "There's only one thing I really feel that is important. We've never measured our success in terms of sales, because we're quite an extreme band. It's more that people understand where we're coming from. I get more out of a fan coming up and saying that we've totally changed their way of looking on metal music, than having like 200 kids buy it. I mean, it would be nice for the money, but that's not why we're in it. So what I'd like to see is that we keep progressing. Keeping the core of what Meshuggah has always been, but exploring the bar, so to speak. Destroy Erase Improve was like exploring the dynamics of the band, Chaosphere was exploring the aggressiveness, the all-out side, and Nothing is more of a sinister, dark, pretty slow album, actually. So honestly, now I don't know where we're going. It might be a mix of all of them."
In February 2004, bassist Dick Lövgren joined Meshuggah. The band then recorded and released the I EP, which contains a single, 21-minute track, released on Fractured Transmitter Records. Meshuggah spent about six months in total on recording the EP. Catch Thirtythree, the only Meshuggah album on which programmed drums have been used, was released the following year in May 2005. Seven thousand copies of Catch Thirtythree were sold the first week, and it debuted at No. 170 on the Billboard 200 chart in June 2005. The video for the track "Shed" was released in June, and the previous album Nothing sold approximately 80,000 copies in the United States to that date, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Catch Thirtythree earned the band a Swedish Grammy nomination. In October 2005, German band Rammstein released a single of their song "Benzin" with a remixed version by Meshuggah.
In December 2005, 10 years after signing its first record deal with the publishing company Warner/Chappell Music Scandinavia, Meshuggah extended its cooperation with the company. In November 2005, Haake said in an interview that the band was not content with the productions of Chaosphere and Nothing, because, being on tour, they had little time to devote to them.
A remixed and remastered version of Nothing with rerecorded guitars was released in a custom-shaped slipcase featuring a three-dimensional hologram card on 31 October 2006, via Nuclear Blast Records. The release also includes a bonus DVD featuring the band's appearance at the Download 2005 festival and the official music videos of "Rational Gaze", "Shed" and "New Millennium Cyanide Christ".
### obZen and Koloss (2007–2013)
Meshuggah returned to the studio in March 2007 to record obZen, with recording concluding in October 2007, and the album being released in March 2008. The band spent almost a year on the album, its longest recording session yet. A significant portion of the year was spent learning to perform the songs they wrote; the recording itself took six months. obZen reached No. 59 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 11,400 U.S. copies in its first week of release and 50,000 copies after six months. With obZen, Meshuggah received more media attention and attracted new fans. The release was followed by a world tour, which started in the U.S. and proceeded to Europe, Asia and Australia.
In May 2008, Meshuggah published a music video for the song "Bleed", which was produced by Ian McFarland and was written, directed and edited by Mike Pecci and Ian McFarland. Killswitch Productions said: "It's extremely cool to work with a band who is willing to allow the music and imagery to speak for itself and who does not insist on themselves being the prominent focus of the video."
In January 2009, obZen was nominated for the Swedish Grammis award in the "Best Hard Rock" category. In February 2009, Haake announced that the band was planning a concert DVD and a studio album. In April, Meshuggah was forced to cancel its Scandinavian shows in early 2009, due to Haake's herniated disc in his lower back, which was causing problems with his right foot when playing. Haake later underwent a surgery and recovered for European summer festivals.
The concert DVD entitled Alive was released on 5 February 2010 in Europe and 9 February in North America. Thordendal started to work on a second solo album in June 2010 with the Belgian drummer Dirk Verbeuren.
The seventh studio album, Koloss, was released on 23 March 2012 in Germany, on 26 March in the rest of Europe, and 27 March in North America. Koloss reached No. 17 on the Billboard Top 200, and sold 18,342 copies in its first week. In Sweden, it reached No. 12.
### Pitch Black and The Violent Sleep of Reason (2013–2018)
On 5 February 2013, Meshuggah released a free two-track EP entitled Pitch Black with Scion A/V. The EP features a previously unreleased track, "Pitch Black", that was recorded by Fredrik Thordendal in 2003 at Fear and Loathing, in Stockholm Sweden. The second track is a live recording of "Dancers to a Discordant System" from obZen. The track was recorded at Distortion Fest in Eindhoven, Netherlands, on 9 December 2012.
On 12 May 2016, Meshuggah released a teaser video on their YouTube page and confirmed that their next studio album was to be released in late 2016. On 28 July 2016, the title was revealed to be The Violent Sleep of Reason, and was given a 7 October release date. The Violent Sleep of Reason was shortlisted by IMPALA (The Independent Music Companies Association) for the Album of the Year Award 2016, which rewards on a yearly basis the best album released on an independent European label.
On 2 June 2017, Meshuggah announced that Thordendal would take a leave from touring with the band; he would be temporarily replaced by Per Nilsson from Scar Symmetry. In 2018, Meshuggah received a Grammy nomination for their song "Clockworks" under the "Best Metal Performance" category.
### Immutable (2019–present)
In a November 2019 interview, Hagström hinted that the band has begun working on a new album. Recording started in March 2021. Later that month the band stated that Fredrik Thordendal had ended his hiatus and would be participating fully in the recording of the new album. On 28 January 2022, Meshuggah released a new song titled "The Abysmal Eye" taken from the band's ninth album Immutable, which was later released on 1 April 2022 via Atomic Fire.
## Musical style
Meshuggah's experimentation, stylistic variation and changes during its career cross several musical subgenres. Heavy metal subgenres experimental metal or avant-garde metal are umbrella terms that enable description of the career of the band in general. Extreme metal crosses both thrash metal and death metal (or technical death metal), which are at root of the sound of Meshuggah's music, which has also been described as groove metal. The band has also been labelled as math metal and progressive metal. Meshuggah also incorporates elements of experimental jazz. In its review of Nothing, AllMusic describes Meshuggah as "masterminds of cosmic calculus metal—call it Einstein metal if you want". Meshuggah's early output was also considered alternative metal. Meshuggah creates a recognizable sonic imprint and distinct style.
Trademarks and characteristics that define Meshuggah's sound and songwriting include polyrhythms, polymetered riff cycles, rhythmic syncopation, rapid key and tempo changes and neo-jazz chromatics. Hagström notes that "it doesn't really matter if something is hard to play or not. The thing is, what does it do to your mind when you listen to it? Where does it take you?" A trademark of Thordendal is jazz fusion-like soloing and improvisation. He is also known for the usage of a "breath controller" device. Haake is known for his cross-rhythm drumming with "jazzlike cadence". The vocal style of Jens Kidman varies between hardcore-style shouts and "robotic" death metal vocals.
In polymeters typically used by Meshuggah, the guitars might play in odd meters such as 5/16 or 17/16, while drums play in 4/4. One particular example of Haake's use of polymeter is 4/4 against 23/16 bimeter, in which he keeps the hi-hat or china cymbal in 4/4 time but uses the snare and double bass drums in 23/16 time. On "Rational Gaze" (from Nothing), Haake plays simple 4/4 time, hitting the snare on each third beat, for 16 bars. At the same time, the guitars and bass are playing same quarter notes, albeit in a different time signature; eventually both sides meet up again at the 64th beat. Hagström notes about the polymeters, "We've never really been into the odd time signatures we get accused of using. Everything we do is based around a 4/4 core. It's just that we arrange parts differently around that center to make it seem like something else is going on."
### Contradictions Collapse, Destroy Erase Improve and Chaosphere
The early work of Meshuggah, influenced mainly by Metallica, is "simpler and more straightforward than their more recent material, but some of their more progressive elements are present in the form of time-changes and polyrhythmics, and Fredrik Thordendal's lead playing stands out". According to AllMusic, their debut album is a relatively immature, but original, release. Double bass drums and "angular" riffing also defined the early work of Meshuggah.
With the groundbreaking Destroy Erase Improve, Meshuggah showed fusion of death metal, thrash metal, progressive metal. AllMusic describes the style as "weaving hardcore-style shouts amongst deceptively (and deviously) simple staccato guitar riffs and insanely precise drumming—often with all three components acting in different time signatures". Thordendal adds the melodic element with his typical lead guitar and uses his "breath controller" device most famously on the opening track "Future Breed Machine".
Chaosphere incorporates typically fast, still tempo changing death metal. AllMusic compares the genre also with grindcore fathers Napalm Death. Rockdetector states: "Whilst fans reveled in the maze like meanderings, critics struggled to dissect and analyze, hailing Haake's unconventional use of dual 4/4 and 23/16 rhythm, Kidman's mechanical staccato bark and Thordendal's liberal usage of avant-garde jazz".
### Nothing, I and Catch Thirtythree
On Nothing, Meshuggah abandons the fast tempos of Chaosphere and concentrates on slow, tuned down tempos and grooves. The album was intended to be recorded using custom-made Nevborn eight-string guitars, but the prototypes were faulty so Thordendal and Hagström used down tuned Ibanez seven-string guitars instead. This technique caused the instruments to slip out of tune during the sessions, which created additional problems. When Ibanez provided Meshuggah with special eight-string guitars with two extra-low strings that worked properly after the initial release, the band re-recorded the guitar parts for Nothing and re-released it in 2006. Hagström notes that this allowed the band to go lower sonically and to attain bass sounds on guitars.
The I EP contains a single, 21-minute song of complex arrangements and was a hint of the forthcoming album, 2005's Catch Thirtythree. The EP, which has never been played live by the band, was written and recorded during jamming sessions of Haake and Thordendal. On Catch Thirtythree, Meshuggah again used eight-string guitars, but utilized programmed drums for the first time also for the release, with the exception of two songs from 2001's compilation Rare Trax. The album was self-produced by the band and was recorded at the studio that Meshuggah shares with Clawfinger. Hagström notes, "The eight-strings really have given us a whole new musical vocabulary to work with. Part of it is the restrictions they impose: you really can't play power chords with them; the sound just turns to mush. Instead, we concentrated on coming up with really unusual single-note parts, new tunings and chord voicings. We wanted to get as far away from any kind of conventions and traditions as we could on the album, so the guitars worked out beautifully."
Catch Thirtythree is one 47-minute song divided into 13 sections. It is more mid-tempo guitar riff based, and a more straightforward and experimental full-length album than Chaosphere or Nothing. Nick Terry of Decibel Magazine describes the album as a four-movement symphony. Some songs still use Meshuggah's "familiar template combining harsh vocals and nightmarish melodies over coarse, mechanically advancing, oddball tempos", while others explore ambient sounds and quieter dynamics. The first part of Catch Thirtythree centers around two simple riffs. In the song "In Death - Is Death", the band uses a combination of noise and silence, which is in contrast with the atypical melodies on "Dehumanization". On "Mind's Mirrors", Meshuggah used electronics, programming and "robotic voices". "Shed" incorporates tribal percussion and whispered vocals.
### obZen and Koloss
With 2008's obZen, Meshuggah moved away from the experimentation of 2002's Nothing and 2005's Catch Thirtythree to return to the musical style of its previous albums, such as Contradictions Collapse, Destroy Erase Improve and Chaosphere, while still maintaining its focus on musical and technical innovation. The album loses some of the quick, mathematical rhythmic changes of past releases and the melodic orchestration of Catch Thirty-Three and uses "angular" riffs, mid-tempo and common 4/4 beats. The album is a culmination of the band's previous work. Meshuggah decided to self-produce because it sought to retain artistic control over the recording and mixing process.
For obZen, Haake returned to the drum kit most notably with his performance on the song "Bleed". In an interview for Gravemusic.com, Haake stated, "['Bleed'] was a big effort for me to learn, I had to find a totally new approach to playing the double bass drums to be able to do that stuff. I had never really done anything like that before like the fast bursts that go all the way through the song basically. So I actually spent as much time practicing that track alone as I did with all of the other tracks combined. It's kind of a big feat to change your approach like that and I'm glad we were able to nail it for the album. For a while though we didn't even know if it was going to make it to the album." Hagström also stated, "obZen is one of the most highly technical offerings the band has ever put to tape". Revolver Magazine confirms this statement: "At first listen, obZen seems less challenging to the listener than some of the band's other records, and most of the songs flow smoothly from one syncopated passage to the next. However, careful examination reveals that the material is some of the group's most complicated".
A common quality in Koloss identified by multiple critics and outlets is the album's relatively straightforward, more groove-oriented sound, summed up by Metal Sucks as the band having "streamlined their compositions to a great extent." The broad style of the record has been described as "primal" and featuring "less jazzy virtuosity" than the band's previous output. Pitchfork noted that the record's rawer production style advanced this "tribal" sound further. The album invokes a greater sound of menace and "darkness" according to Metal Injection; additionally, Jens Kidman's vocals were described as "exponentially more anguished" than previous works. Metal Injection further compared the sound of the album's closing track "The Last Vigil" to works by the instrumental band Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The record's guitar riffs have been noted as deviating somewhat from Meshuggah's earlier catalog, with SPIN identifying "an almost bluesy swing" in the playing style. SPIN further elaborated on the guitar leads, comparing the solos in "The Demon's Name is Surveillance" and "Marrow" to the (non-metal) works of experimental composer Philip Glass and jazz-guitarist Allan Holdsworth respectively.
### The Violent Sleep of Reason
For their eighth album, the band recorded live in studio, a production style they hadn't pursued in reportedly "20, 25 years". On rejecting the computerized format of recording of their previous albums, Haake said "Obzen and Koloss are great albums, but, to me, they are a little too perfect. It didn't really capture what we sounded like honestly. But where we recorded live, you get to hear the push and pull, one person might be a little ahead and the other might be a little behind. If you kill that, you can kill the energy." It is the first album to have no writing credit from Thordendal; the majority of the album was written by Haake and Lövgren.
## Analysis
Meshuggah has become known for its innovative musical style that evolves between each release and pushes heavy metal into new territory, and for its technical prowess. Hagström commented: "We try never to repeat ourselves." RockDetector stated about Destroy Erase Improve: "[T]he band...stripped Metal down to the bare essentials before completely rebuilding it in a totally abstract form". The official Meshuggah biography comments on Chaosphere by noting that "Some fans felt that Meshuggah had left their dynamic and progressive elements behind; while others thought they were only progressing naturally and focusing on their original sound." The band's website also describes Nothing as displaying "a very mature and convincing Meshuggah, now focusing on groove and sound...Meshuggah once again divided their fans into the 'ecstatic' and the 'slightly disappointed'". The polyrhythms can make the music sound cacophonous, like band members are playing different songs simultaneously. Listeners perceiving a polyrhythm often either extract a composite pattern that is fitted to a metric framework, or focus on one rhythmic stream while treating others as "noise".
Rolling Stone labeled Meshuggah as "one of the ten most important hard and heavy bands", and Alternative Press described them as the "most important band in metal". Meshuggah has been described as virtuoso or genius-bordering musicians, "recognized by mainstream music magazines, especially those dedicated to particular instruments". In 2007, Meshuggah earned an in-depth analysis by the academic journal Music Theory Spectrum. Meshuggah has found little mainstream success but is a significant act in extreme underground music, an influence for modern metal bands and has a cult following. Meshuggah inspired the "djent" subgenre in progressive metal, that describes an "elastic, syncopated guitar riff" with its name. They were described as being "the first djent band completely by accident"; in a 2018 interview, Hagström jokingly apologised for the band's role in creating the term, calling it a "drunk misunderstanding".
## Method and lyrical themes
Meshuggah's music is written by Thordendal, Hagström and Haake with assistance from Kidman and Lövgren. During songwriting, a member programs the drums, and records the guitar and bass via computer. He presents his idea to the other members as a finished work. Meshuggah typically adheres to the original idea and rarely changes the song afterwards. Hagström explains that each member has an idea of what the others are doing conceptually, and nobody thinks exclusively in terms of a particular instrument. Kidman does not play guitar in the band anymore, but he is involved in writing riffs.
Except for when Hagström needs a soloist, he and Thordendal rarely record together. Both play guitar and bass while composing. Haake says about his songwriting, "Sometimes I'll sample guitar parts, cut them up, pitch-shift and tweak them until I've built the riffs I want, just for demoing purposes. But most of the time I'll just present the drums, and explain my ideas for the rest of the song, sing some riffs." The band uses Cubase to record the tracks, and the guitars are routed through software amplifier modeling, because it allows them to change the amp settings even after the song was fully recorded.
Approximately once a year, Haake writes most of the band's lyrics, with the exception of finished tracks. His lyrical inspirations are derived from books and films. Aside from their album Catch Thirtythree, Meshuggah does not usually record concept albums, although the band prefers strong conceptual underpinnings in the background.
Often esoteric and conceptual, Meshuggah's lyrics explore themes such as existentialism. AllMusic describes Destroy Erase Improve's lyrical focus as "the integration of machines with organisms as humanity's next logical evolutionary step". PopMatters' review of Nothing singles out the lyrics from "Rational Gaze": "Our light-induced image of truth—filtered blank of its substance / As our eyes won't adhere to intuitive lines / Everything examined. Separated, one thing at a time / The harder we stare the more complete the disintegration." Haake explains that Catch Thirtythree's cover, title and lyrics deal with "the paradoxes/negations/contradictions of life and death (as we see it in our finest moments of unrestrained metaphoric interpretation)".
The main theme of obZen is "human evil", according to Haake. The title is a play on the words "obscene" and "Zen"; in addition, "ob" means "anti" in Latin. Therefore, the title suggests that the human species has found harmony and balance in warfare and bloodshed. Revolver Magazine finds the lyrics of the title track from obZen representative of the entire album: "Salvation found in vomit and blood/Where depravation, lies, corruption/War and pain is god." However, Haake claims, "We don't dwell on hate and bad feelings as people. But with these songs, I think we really wanted to paint a picture lyrically that might be seen as a cautionary tale. We're going, 'Heads up. Here's what some of the parts of being human are about, and this is what we can be at our worst.' So it's more about being aware of negative feelings than actually living them all the time."
## Members
Current
- Jens Kidman – lead vocals (1987–present); rhythm guitar (1987–1993)
- Fredrik Thordendal – lead guitar (1987–present); backing vocals (1992–present); co-lead vocals (1987–1992); keyboards (1992–2001); bass (2001–2004)
- Tomas Haake – drums, spoken vocals (1989–present)
- Mårten Hagström – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (1993–present); bass (2001–2004)
- Dick Lövgren – bass (2004–present)
Former
- Niklas Lundgren – drums (1987–1989)
- Peter Nordin – bass (1987–1995)
- Gustaf Hielm – bass (1995–2001; touring member 2002–2004)
Former touring musicians
- Per Nilsson – lead guitar, backing vocals (2017–2019)
Timeline
## Discography
- Contradictions Collapse (1991)
- Destroy Erase Improve (1995)
- Chaosphere (1998)
- Nothing (2002)
- Catch Thirtythree (2005)
- obZen (2008)
- Koloss (2012)
- The Violent Sleep of Reason (2016)
- Immutable (2022)
## Awards and nominations
Loudwire Music Awards
\|- \| 2012 \|\| Meshuggah \|\| Death Match Hall of Fame \|\|
Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards
\|- \| 2005 \|\| Meshuggah \|\| Best Underground Band \|\| \|- \| 2012 \|\| Meshuggah \|\| Best International Band \|\| \|- \| 2015 \|\| Meshuggah \|\| Best Live Band \|\| \|- \| 2018 \|\| Meshuggah \|\| Inspiration \|\|
Revolver Music Awards
\|- \| 2012 \|\| Meshuggah \|\| Best International Band \|\| \|- \| 2016 \|\| Meshuggah \|\| Album of the year \|\|
Decibel Magazine
\|- \| 2006 \|\| Destroy Erase Improve \|\| Hall of Fame \|\|
IMPALA
\|- \| 2016 \|\| The Violent Sleep of Reason \|\| Independent Album of the Year Award \|\|
Grammy Awards
\|- \| 2018 \|\| "Clockworks" \|\| Best Metal Performance \|\|
|
4,315,178 |
Sind sparrow
| 1,154,001,471 |
Sparrow species of bird found in South Asia
|
[
"Birds described in 1844",
"Birds of North India",
"Birds of Pakistan",
"Birds of Sindh",
"Passer",
"Taxa named by Edward Blyth"
] |
The Sind sparrow (Passer pyrrhonotus) is a passerine bird of the sparrow family, Passeridae, found around the Indus valley region in South Asia specially Sindh. It is also known as the jungle, Sind jungle, or rufous-backed sparrow. Very similar to the related house sparrow, it is smaller and has distinguishing plumage features. As in the house sparrow, the male has brighter plumage than female and young birds, including black markings and a grey crown. Distinctively, the male has a chestnut stripe running down its head behind the eye, and the female has a darker head than other sparrow species. Its main vocalisations are soft chirping calls that are extended into longer songs with other sounds interspersed by breeding males. Historically, this species was thought to be very closely related to the house sparrow, but its closest evolutionary affinities may lie elsewhere. The species was discovered around 1840, but went undetected for several decades afterwards.
Within its Indus valley breeding range in Pakistan and western India, the Sind sparrow is patchily distributed in riverine and wetland habitats with thorny scrub and tall grass. During the non-breeding season, some birds enter drier habitats as they disperse short distances from their breeding habitat, or migrate into western Pakistan and the extreme east of Iran. Since this species is fairly common and expanding its range, it is assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List. The Sind sparrow is social while feeding and gathers in small groups both while breeding and during winter dispersal. It feeds mostly on seeds and less often on insects, foraging close to the ground. Nests are made in the branches of thorny trees, and are untidy globular masses constructed from grass or other plant matter and lined with softer material. Both sexes are involved in building the nest and caring for the young, and usually raise two clutches of three to five young each breeding season.
## Description
The Sind sparrow is very similar to the house sparrow, and both sexes resemble their counterparts of that species, but it is slightly smaller and males and females each have features that distinguish them as Sind sparrows. The Sind sparrow is 13 cm (5.1 in) long, while the common South Asian subspecies of the house sparrow, Passer domesticus indicus, is 15 cm (5.9 in) long. Wingspans range from 6.2 to 7.0 cm (2.4 to 2.8 in), tails from 4.7 to 5.7 cm (1.9 to 2.2 in), and tarsi measure 1.6–1.9 centimetres (0.63–0.75 in).
The breeding male has a short and narrow black bib and a broad chestnut eye stripe that does not meet the mantle. The male has a grey crown and nape and a rufous lower back and rump. The female has a darker and greyer crown and cheek than the female house sparrow and the shoulder is darker chestnut. The female Dead Sea sparrow of the subspecies Passer moabiticus yattii is also similar to the female Sind sparrow, but has yellow tinges on the underparts and sometimes on parts of the head. The bill is black on the breeding male and pale brown on the non-breeding male and female. With a culmen length of 1.1–1.3 centimetres (0.43–0.51 in), the Sind sparrow is slightly smaller-billed than the house sparrow.
The Sind sparrow's chirping chup call is softer, less strident, and higher pitched than that of the house sparrow, and is easily distinguished. The song of breeding males includes chirrups interspersed with grating t-r-r-rt notes and short warbles or whistles.
## Taxonomy
The Sind sparrow was first formally described by Edward Blyth, from a specimen collected by Alexander Burnes at Bahawalpur in around 1840. Blyth's description was published in an issue of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal which, although dated 1844, was published only in 1845. The sparrow was not recorded until 36 years later, despite the efforts of noted ornithologists Allan Octavian Hume in Sindh and William Thomas Blanford in eastern Iran. This was probably because of its general similarity to the house sparrow, though additionally, Blyth's description of the species incorrectly described its rump feathers as maroon, and a description by Thomas C. Jerdon contained similar errors. Commenting on his unsuccessful search, Hume wrote that the hundreds of house sparrows he killed in pursuit of the Sind sparrow "ought to form a heavy load" on Blyth's conscience, and that if the Sind sparrow existed "it would be only decent for it ... to put on an appearance with as little delay as possible". Hume doubted its distinction, as did other ornithologists. The Sind sparrow was rediscovered by Scrope Berdmore Doig in 1880, in the Eastern Nara district. Ernst Hartert considered it a subspecies of the house sparrow, Passer domesticus pyrrhonotus, in his Die Vögel der paläarktishen Fauna, but Doig and Claud Ticehurst both found that the two species bred in the same areas without interbreeding.
The specific epithet of the Sind sparrow, pyrrhonotus, comes from the Greek purrhos ("flame-coloured"), and -nōtos ("-backed"). E. C. Stuart Baker suggested the English name rufous-backed sparrow, but as this name might cause confusion with other species, Ticehurst suggested the name Sind jungle-sparrow, which became the accepted name for the species. This name refers to Sindh, a province now in Pakistan which makes up a large part of the Sind sparrow's range, and the jungle habitat of the bird (in the word's original sense of tangled dry thicket). This name is shortened to jungle sparrow or Sind sparrow, of which the first was used in the IOC World Bird List, until Sind sparrow was adopted in 2009.
The Sind sparrow is a member of the genus Passer, which contains the house sparrow and around twenty other species. In a 1936 review of the house sparrow's relatives, German ornithologist Wilhelm Meise suggested that the Sind sparrow evolved from an isolated population of house sparrows, noting that the Indus valley is a centre of small bird types.
British ornithologist J. Denis Summers-Smith considered the Sind sparrow to be part of the "Palaearctic black-bibbed sparrow" group including the house sparrow, though not one with a particularly close relationship with the house sparrow. Summer-Smith suggested that these species separated 25,000 to 15,000 years ago, during the last glacial period, when sparrows would have been isolated in ice-free refugia, such as the Indus River Delta, where he thought the Sind sparrow evolved. However, studies of mitochondrial DNA and nuclear DNA genes indicate an earlier origin of Passer species, with speciation occurring as early as the late Miocene and early Pliocene, about 5 million years ago. The chestnut sparrow, russet sparrow and saxaul sparrow, which were also considered to be members of the "Palaearctic black-bibbed sparrow" group, are not phylogenetically closely related with the house sparrow. But there is more or less conflict between the two studies (and between different analyses), some clades are not highly supported, and the Sind sparrow was not included, so the evolutionary history of Sind sparrow and its relationship to other sparrow species remain unclear.
Hume and Ticehurst observed a resemblance, and a possible relation, between the Sind sparrow and the Dead Sea sparrow of the Middle East and Balochistan. William Robert Ogilvie-Grant and Henry Ogg Forbes saw a resemblance to the Abd al-Kuri sparrow, endemic to the island of Abd al-Kuri, in their 1899 description of that species, noted upon by Guy M. Kirwan in a 2008 study.
## Distribution and habitat
The Sind sparrow has a restricted distribution, primarily occurring within the Indus valley of Pakistan, and the lower parts of the tributaries of the Indus in the Punjab region. Its distribution extends from the Indus Delta north to the Kabul River near Nowshera and the Jhelum near Nurpur Noon, extending east into India as far as the Delhi area. It also breeds locally in parts of Pakistan's western province of Balochistan, and has been recorded several times in south-eastern Iran. The Sind sparrow is somewhat common in its restricted breeding range, and no threats are known to the survival of the species, so it is assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List.
During winter, it often makes short-distance movements, and some birds move into parts of western Pakistan and an adjoining corner of Iran, and less commonly north-western Gujarat, India. Longer movements may occur, as suggested by a possible sighting in the United Arab Emirates in November 2000.
It mostly breeds in acacia and tamarisk scrub and tall grass, invariably near rivers or other wetlands. The construction and expansion of irrigation canals has increased its habitat in Sindh, and helped it extend its range into the Yamuna floodplain and parts of Rajasthan, India. It may breed around rice paddies and other fields, or human habitations, provided that there is enough cover and suitable nesting sites. In winter, it moves away from its main riverine habitat, and into drier thickets characterised by Salvadora and Capparis bushes, but never moves too far from water.
## Behaviour
The Sind sparrow is gregarious, generally forming small groups of four to six birds while feeding. It tends to breed in loose colonies of a few pairs, and non-breeding birds may gather to roost in acacias or tamarisks near water. During winter, the non-breeding season, it forms larger flocks of as many as 30 birds, and joins flocks with other seed-eating birds, such as house sparrows and red avadavats. The Sind sparrow feeds mainly on the seeds of grasses and other plants such as Polygonum plebeium. It may also forage for insects such as caterpillars, especially to feed nestlings. Flocks forage on flats alongside rivers, flying into nearby bushes and continuing to forage when disturbed.
Nesting occurs during a period of several months between April and September, the timing depending on rainfall, during which two clutches are raised by most pairs. Sind sparrows build nests in the upper branches of thorny trees or the ends of thin branches hanging over water. The nest is an untidy dome of grass and other plant matter, such as tamarisk twigs, roots, and reeds, with a diameter of about 9 to 18 cm (3.5 to 7.1 in). The nest has an entrance located higher up on the sides, is somewhat flat on top, and is lined with softer plant material and feathers. The birds may sometimes build below the nests of egrets or extend the nest of a baya weaver or Indian pied myna. Both the male and female take part in nest building and incubation. Clutches typically contain three to five eggs. Scrope Doig described the eggs as being markedly smaller than the house sparrow's, measuring 0.7 × 0.5 in (1.3 × 1.8 cm) and similarly greenish or greyish with highly variable blotches, striations, and other markings.
|
377,318 |
Pacific swift
| 1,167,708,581 |
Species of bird which breeds in eastern Asia
|
[
"Apus (genus)",
"Birds described in 1801",
"Birds of East Asia",
"Birds of Nepal",
"Birds of North Asia",
"Birds of Oceania",
"Taxa named by John Latham (ornithologist)"
] |
The Pacific swift or fork-tailed swift (Apus pacificus) is a species of bird that is part of the Swift family. It breeds in eastern Asia. It is strongly migratory, spending the northern hemisphere's winter in Southeast Asia and Australia. The general shape and blackish plumage recall its relative, the common swift, from which it is distinguished by a white rump band and heavily marked underparts. The sexes are identical in appearance, although young birds can be identified by pale fringes to the wing feathers that are absent in adults. This swift's main call is a screech typical of its family. It is one of a group of closely related Asian swifts formerly regarded as one species.
The Pacific swift is found in a wide range of climatic zones and habitats. It breeds in sheltered locations such as caves, natural rock crevices or under the roofs of houses. The nest is a half-cup of dry grass and other fine material that is gathered in flight, cemented with saliva and attached to a vertical surface. The two or three white eggs are incubated for about seventeen days to hatching. Subsequently, the chicks have a long but variable period in the nest before they are fully fledged. When the parents cannot find sufficient food in bad weather, the young can survive for days without being fed by metabolising body fat.
Like all members of its family, the Pacific swift feeds exclusively on insects caught in flight. It tends to hunt higher than most of its relatives other than the white-throated needletail. The Pacific swift has a large population and extensive breeding area, and faces few threats from predators or human activities. It is classed as being of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It has occurred as far afield as the US and New Zealand, and it is a very rare vagrant in Europe.
## Taxonomy
The swifts form the bird family Apodidae, which is divided into several genera. The Pacific swift is in the Old World genus Apus, which is characterised by dark, glossy plumage, a forked tail and sharply pointed wings. Until recently, the Pacific swift was considered to have five subspecies, but three have now been elevated to full species status as part of a "fork-tailed swift" superspecies. The proposed name of the superspecies was formerly a synonym for the Pacific swift.
A 2011 study proposed the following treatment. The long-tailed birds from the Tibetan Plateau with a narrow white throat patch are separated as Salim Ali's swift, A. salimali, the small swifts with narrow white rumps from the Himalayas of India, Nepal and Bhutan become Blyth's swift, A. leuconyx, and the population that breeds in limestone caves in northern Southeast Asia, characterised by a green iridescence and shallow tail fork, is split as Cook's swift, A. cooki. The remaining subspecies are the nominate A. p. pacificus and the southern race A. p. kanoi (formerly known as kurodae). This arrangement has been accepted by the International Ornithological Committee (IOC), but not the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A 2012 paper showed that cooki is closely related to the dark-rumped swift, A. acuticauda, which should therefore be included in the pacificus clade, but made no further taxonomic recommendations.
This swift was first described by John Latham in 1801 as Hirundo pacifica. Scopoli separated the swifts from the swallows as the genus Apus in 1777. Apus, like Apodidae, is derived from the Greek απους, apous, meaning "without feet", a reference to the small, weak legs of these most aerial of birds, and pacificus refers to the Pacific Ocean.
## Description
At 17–18 cm (6.7–7.1 in) in length, the Pacific swift is the largest of the Apus swifts. It has a 43-to-54-cm (17-to-21-in) wingspan. Females are slightly heavier than males, averaging 44.5 g (1.57 oz) against 42.5 g (1.50 oz). It is similar in general shape to the common swift, although slightly longer-winged and with a more protruding head. The fork of the tail is deeper, and the rump is broader. The upperparts are black, apart from a white rump band and a somewhat greyer head. The underparts are black, although white fringes to the feathers give the belly a scaly appearance when seen well from below. The tail and the upper wings are black, and the underwings are brown. The eyes are brown and the small bill and very short legs are black. The sexes are identically plumaged, and juveniles differ from the adults only in that the feathers show pale fringes, particularly on the wings. The southern subspecies, A. p. kurodae, has a narrower white rump (15 mm/0.6 in against the nominate form's 20 mm/0.8 in), a grey throat and blacker underparts. Juveniles of migratory Apus swifts have a partial moult prior to migration, but retain the larger wing feathers. The moult is completed in the wintering grounds, where adults have a complete moult.
This species is usually straightforward to identify. The white-rumped swift is similar to Pacific swift, but its slender body and long, deeply forked tail make it appear quite different from its more powerfully built relative. A possible pitfall is a partially leucistic common swift with a white rump. The Pacific swift can be distinguished with care by its deeper tail fork, longer wings, bigger head, larger white throat patch and patterned underparts. In parts of Southeast Asia, migrating Pacific swifts pass through the resident ranges of former subspecies, and good views are then necessary to be sure of correct identification.
### Voice
The calls given by flocks near the breeding areas are typical swift screams, including a trilled tsiririri or harsher spee-eer. They resemble the cries of the common swift, but are softer and less wheezy. Pacific swifts are less vocal on the wintering grounds, but produce a variety of twitters and buzzes.
## Distribution and habitat
The nominate subspecies, A. p. pacificus, breeds in eastern Asia from the Ob River northeast to Kamchatka and east to the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin and Japan. It is strongly migratory, wintering in southern Indonesia, Melanesia and Australia, including Tasmania. It is a common migrant through coastal Malaysia, Sumatra and Java with "vast numbers" crossing the Strait of Malacca. Subspecies A. p. kurodae breeds from southeastern Tibet through eastern China to southern Japan, Taiwan and Orchid Island. It is a relatively short-distance migrant, wintering in the Philippines, Malaysia and northern Indonesia.
As a powerful long-distance migrant, the nominate subspecies of Pacific swift has occurred as a vagrant far from its normal range. Birds have been recorded from Brunei, the Maldives, New Zealand and Macquarie Island, and there have been multiple occurrences in the Seychelles. In the US, this species is casual in the Pribilof and Aleutian Islands; a claimed 2010 sighting from the Yukon will be the first for Canada and the mainland of North America if ratified. In South America, there is a 1959 record from Colombia. There are 13 European records as of 2013, from Denmark (two), Spain, Sweden (four) and the UK (seven). It is possible that this overstates the true number of visiting birds. All the listed countries had a sighting on different dates in the summer of 2013 which could be due to a single wandering bird. The four most recent English records in 2005, 2008, 2011 and 2013 all included sightings at Spurn, East Yorkshire, and may refer to one returning individual.
A mainly aerial species, this swift is not limited to particular land habitats or climatic zones; it breeds from the Arctic to sub-tropical China, and from sea level to at least 3,000 m (9,800 ft) in Japan. It is often found around human habitation. It tends to winter in lowlands, and in Australia it is found in arid areas as well as in towns and on the coast. Flocks of thousands may appear when there are hot strong winds. Pacific swifts often travel and feed with white-throated needletails. The Pacific swift probably sleeps in flight when not nesting, behaviour known to occur in the common swift and suspected in other Apus species, but there is an Australian record of these swifts roosting in a tree, and they are occasionally seen to land briefly on the ground or on vertical surfaces.
## Behaviour
### Breeding
Most Apus swift species nest in rocky areas, and the majority will accept human habitations as a substitute for natural sites. The Pacific swift is a colonial species that nests in sheltered locations such as caves, crevices in vertical rock faces (including sea-cliffs), or under the eaves of houses. The nest is a half-cup of feathers, dry grass and other light vegetation collected in flight, cemented with saliva and attached to a ledge or vertical surface with the same substance. Two or three eggs is the normal clutch, the number varying with geographical location. In areas where three eggs are usual, a fourth may occasionally be laid; no larger clutches are known. The eggs are white, as with all swifts, and 24–27.5 × 16–17 mm (0.95–1.08 × 0.63–0.67 in) in size. They are incubated by both parents for about 17 days prior to hatching as unfeathered and blind altricial chicks. Both adults brood and feed the chicks, which fledge in an average 40.5 days.
Swifts as a family have smaller egg clutches and much longer and more variable incubation and fledging times than passerines with similarly sized eggs, resembling tubenoses in these developmental factors. Young birds reach a maximum weight heavier than their parents; they can cope with not being fed for long periods of time, and delay their feather growth when undernourished. Swifts and seabirds have generally secure nest sites, but their food sources are unreliable, whereas passerines are vulnerable in the nest but food is usually plentiful. These adaptations mean that when conditions are good, the survival rate is very high. One large Yellow Sea colony had hatching success of 73.5%, with 63.6% of the chicks fledging. The average productivity was 1.24 fledged young per pair per year.
### Feeding
All swifts feed on insects caught in flight, and the Pacific swift has been recorded as consuming bees, wasps, termites, moths and flies. A Chinese study found that it caught a wide variety of insect prey and considered that most of the species eaten were harmful to agriculture or forestry, leading to improved agricultural yield in a number of geographical domaines. The Pacific swift tends to hunt higher than sympatric swifts, sharing its airspace mainly with white-throated needletails. It typically feeds at heights up to 300 m (980 ft), only flying close to the ground in poor weather. It often forages near low-pressure areas, which serve both to raise insects from the ground and to give the swifts additional lift. The swifts circle through the insect swarms in flocks typically of tens or hundreds of birds, although sometimes reaching tens of thousands in Australia. In Siberia, Pacific swifts feed at dusk to much later hours than the common swift, sometimes until midnight, and migrants have been seen flying with bats in the Philippines. The young are fed balls of insects bound with saliva. During bad weather, increased competition leads to malnourishment within populations, where young swifts are often not fed for days and survive on stored body fat.
## Predators and parasites
Swifts spend most of their time in flight. Few birds have the necessary speed and agility to catch them, hobbies being the main exception. The nest sites are usually sufficiently inaccessible to be beyond the reach of snakes or mammalian predators.
This swift is host to feather mites including Eustathia cultrifera, Chauliacia canarisi and C. securigera. Biting parasites include the louse fly Crataerina pacifica, bat bugs and sucking mites. Chewing lice include two species first identified on this swift. Davaineidae tapeworms have been found as internal parasites.
## Status
The Pacific swift has a very large range, exceeding 10,000,000 km<sup>2</sup> (3,800,000 mi<sup>2</sup>). Its population is unknown, although it is common throughout its breeding range with no evidence of any decline. It is therefore classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as being of least concern. There appear to be no significant threats to this bird; predation is low, and this swift is not tied to a particular habitat. Some birds may die through misadventure or become exhausted when lost on migration (the first record for the Western Palaearctic was found resting on a North Sea gas platform), but swifts have high survival rates and are generally long-lived. The common swift, a close relative of the Pacific swift, has been recorded as reaching 21 years old.
## Cited texts
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61,965,245 |
Fatimid conquest of Egypt
| 1,171,522,903 |
969 CE overthrow of the Ikhshidid dynasty
|
[
"10th century in Egypt",
"10th century in the Fatimid Caliphate",
"960s conflicts",
"969",
"Egypt under the Fatimid Caliphate",
"Invasions of Egypt",
"Military history of the Fatimid Caliphate",
"Military history of the Ikhshidid dynasty"
] |
The Fatimid conquest of Egypt took place in 969, as the troops of the Fatimid Caliphate under the general Jawhar captured Egypt, then ruled by the autonomous Ikhshidid dynasty in the name of the Abbasid Caliphate.
The Fatimids launched repeated invasions of Egypt soon after coming to power in Ifriqiya (modern Tunisia and eastern Algeria) in 909, but failed against the still-strong Abbasid Caliphate. By the 960s, however, while the Fatimids had consolidated their rule and grown stronger, the Abbasid Caliphate had collapsed, and the Ikhshidid regime was facing prolonged crisis: foreign raids and a severe famine were compounded by the death in 968 of the strongman Abu al-Misk Kafur. The resulting power vacuum led to open infighting among the various factions in Fustat, the capital of Egypt. The atmosphere of crisis was deepened by the simultaneous advances of the Byzantine Empire against the Muslim states of the Eastern Mediterranean. Meanwhile, Fatimid agents operated openly in Egypt, and the local elites increasingly came to accept and even welcome the prospect of a Fatimid takeover in hopes of ending the instability and insecurity.
Faced with this favourable situation, the Fatimid caliph al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah organized a large expedition to conquer Egypt. Led by Jawhar, the expedition set off from Raqqada in Ifriqiya on 6 February 969, and entered the Nile Delta two months later. The Ikhshidid elites preferred to negotiate a peaceful surrender, and Jawhar issued a writ of safe-conduct (amān), promising to respect the rights of the Egyptian notables and populace and take up the jihād against the Byzantines. The Fatimid army overcame the attempts of the Ikhshidid soldiery to prevent its crossing of the Nile river between 29 June and 3 July, while in the chaos pro-Fatimid agents took control of Fustat and declared its submission to al-Mu'izz. Jawhar renewed his amān and took possession of the city on 6 July, with the Friday prayer read in the name of al-Mu'izz on 9 July.
For the next four years Jawhar served as viceroy of Egypt, quelling rebellions and beginning the construction of a new capital, Cairo. His attempts to expand into the former Ikhshidid domains in Syria, and even attack the Byzantines, backfired: after swift initial progress, the Fatimid armies were destroyed, and Egypt itself faced a Qarmatian invasion that was fought off just north of Cairo. Al-Mu'izz arrived in Egypt in 973, and took up residence in Cairo, which became the seat of the Fatimid Caliphate for the remainder of its existence, until the abolition of the Fatimid regime by Saladin in 1171.
## Background: initial Fatimid attempts to capture Egypt
The Fatimid dynasty came to power in Ifriqiya (modern Tunisia and northeastern Algeria) in 909. The Fatimids had fled their home in Syria a few years before, and made for the Maghreb, where their agents had made considerable headway in converting the Kutama Berbers. While the Fatimids remained hidden, the Isma'ili missionary Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i led the Kutama to overthrow the reigning Aghlabid dynasty, allowing the Fatimid leader to reveal himself publicly and declare himself caliph with the regnal name of al-Mahdi Billah (r. 909–934). In contrast to their predecessors, who were content to remain a regional dynasty on the western fringes of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimids held ecumenical pretensions: claiming descent from Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad and wife of Ali, the Fatimid caliphs were simultaneously the leaders of the Isma'ili Shi'a sect, whose followers accorded them semi-divine status as imams, the lawful vicegerents of God on earth. Consequently, the Fatimids regarded their rise to power as the first step in the restoration of their rightful place as leaders of the entire Muslim world against the usurping, pro-Sunni Abbasids, whom they were determined to overthrow and replace.
In line with this imperial vision, following the establishment of their rule in Ifriqiya, the next objective was Egypt, the gateway to the Levant and Iraq, the seat of their Abbasid rivals. In 914, a first invasion under the Fatimid heir-apparent al-Qa'im bi-Amr Allah was launched eastwards. It captured Cyrenaica (Barqa), Alexandria and the Fayyum Oasis, but failed to take the Egyptian capital, Fustat, and was driven back in 915, following the arrival of Abbasid reinforcements from Syria and Iraq. A second invasion was undertaken in 919–921. Alexandria was again captured, but the Fatimids were repelled in front of Fustat and their navy was destroyed. Al-Qa'im moved to the Fayyum Oasis, but was forced to abandon it in the face of fresh Abbasid troops and to retreat over the desert to Ifriqiya.
The failure of these early invasion attempts was chiefly due to the overextension of Fatimid logistics, and the concomitant failure to achieve decisive success before the arrival of Abbasid reinforcements. Nevertheless, Barqa was left in Fatimid hands as a forward base from which to threaten Egypt. As the Abbasid Caliphate entered a severe and general crisis in the 930s, the Fatimids once more tried to take advantage of the ensuing conflicts between the military factions in Egypt in 935–936. Fatimid forces briefly occupied Alexandria, but the actual victor of this affair was Muhammad ibn Tughj al-Ikhshid, a Turkish commander who established himself as the ruler of Egypt and southern Syria—ostensibly on the Abbasids' behalf but for all practical purposes independent—and founded the Ikhshidid dynasty. During his subsequent disputes with Baghdad, al-Ikhshid did not hesitate to seek Fatimid support, even suggesting a marriage alliance between one of his sons and a daughter of al-Qa'im, but after the Abbasid court recognized his rule and titles, he dropped this proposal.
On the Fatimid side, by the late 930s the initial revolutionary élan that had brought the Fatimids to power had faded, and although the claims to universal sovereignty were not forgotten, they were put on hold due to the outbreak of the large-scale revolt of the Khariji Berber preacher Abu Yazid (943–947). This rebellion almost brought the Fatimid regime to collapse, and even after its suppression, the Fatimids were for some time preoccupied with restoring their position in the western Mediterranean. During this time, Egypt was left in relative peace. Following the death of al-Ikhshid in 946, power passed to the strongman Abu al-Misk Kafur, a black eunuch slave whom al-Ikhshid had appointed as commander-in-chief of the army. For twenty years, Kafur was content to be the power behind the throne, as al-Ikhshid's sons ruled as emirs, but in 966 he assumed the throne in his own right.
## Changing circumstances: Egypt in the 960s
During the second third of the 10th century, the balance of power shifted in the Fatimids' favour: while the Fatimids consolidated their regime, the Abbasid Caliphate was weakened by constant power struggles between rival bureaucratic, courtly, and military factions. Gradually deprived of its outlying provinces by ambitious local dynasts and reduced to Iraq, after 946, the Abbasid caliphs themselves were reduced to powerless pawns of the Buyids.
By the 960s, the Ikhshidids were also facing a crisis, a combination of domestic tensions and external pressures. The Christian Nubian kingdom of Makuria launched invasions of Egypt from the south, while in the west, the Lawata Berbers occupied the region around Alexandria, and allied themselves with local Bedouin tribes of the Western Desert to confront the Ikhshidid troops. In Syria, increasing Bedouin restiveness challenged Ikhshidid rule, especially as it coincided with an invasion of Syria by the Qarmatians, an Isma'ili sect based in Bahrayn (Eastern Arabia). Frequently allied with the Bedouin, the Qarmatians raided the caravans of merchants and Hajj pilgrims alike, with the Ikhshidids unable to counter their attacks. The situation was such that the overland routes from Egypt to Iraq were practically cut. Modern scholars have suspected the hand of the Fatimids behind at least some of these events: according to the French Orientalist Thierry Bianquis, the Makurian raid of 956, which pillaged the area of Aswan, was "probably supported covertly by the Fatimids", and a Fatimid collusion in the Bedouin and Qarmatian attacks in Syria has been "usually supposed", but, as the historian Michael Brett cautions, there is "no real evidence" to that effect.
The domestic situation in Egypt was worsened by a series of low Nile floods beginning in 962. In 967, the flood reached the lowest level recorded during the entire early Islamic period, followed by three years when the level of the river remained well below normal. Hot winds and locust swarms also did much to destroy crops, ushering in the worst famine in living memory, aggravated further by the outbreak of a rat-borne plague. Consequently, food prices rose rapidly: by 968, a chicken was to be had at 25 times its pre-famine price, and an egg at fifty times. The capital, Fustat, suffered most heavily. The most populous city in the Islamic world after Baghdad, it was ravaged by famine and outbreaks of epidemics (which continued into the early years of Fatimid rule). The poor harvests also reduced the revenue flowing into the treasury, leading to cuts in spending. This directly affected the influential religious circles; not only were their salaries left unpaid, but the money for the upkeep of the mosques vanished, and the inability to provide the men and money necessary to guarantee their security meant that after 965, the Hajj caravans ceased altogether.
Furthermore, the 960s saw the Byzantine Empire under Nikephoros II Phokas (r. 963–969) expand at the expense of the Islamic world, capturing Crete, Cyprus, and Cilicia, and advancing into northern Syria. The Ikhshidid regime's response to this advance was hesitant and ineffective: after doing nothing to help Crete, the fleet sent in response to the fall of Cyprus was destroyed by the Byzantine navy, leaving the coasts of Egypt and Syria defenceless. The Egyptian Muslims clamoured for jihād and launched anti-Christian pogroms that were suppressed with difficulty. Fatimid propaganda was quick to exploit the Byzantine offensive, contrasting the ineffectiveness of the Ikhshidids and their Abbasid suzerains with the Fatimids, who at the time were successfully fighting with the Byzantines in southern Italy, as vigorous champions of Islam. The Byzantine advance, coupled with the contemporaneous depredations of the Bedouin and Qarmatians in central Syria, also served to deprive Egypt of Syrian wheat, its usual resort during famines.
Against this backdrop of internal problems and external threats, and following the permanent decline of their former imperial overlords, the possibility of a Fatimid takeover became an increasingly more attractive prospect to the Egyptians.
## Collapse of the Ikhshidid regime
The death of Abu al-Misk Kafur in April 968, without leaving an heir, paralyzed the Ikhshidid regime. Kafur's vizier, Ja'far ibn al-Furat, who was married to an Ikhshidid princess and may have entertained hopes for their son to sit on the throne, tried to control the government, but lacked a power-base outside the bureaucracy; while the army was divided into mutually antagonistic factions (chiefly the Ikhshidiyya, recruited by al-Ikhshid, and the Kafuriyya, recruited by Kafur). The military leaders would have preferred that one of their own succeed Kafur, but were forced to back down in the face of the Ikhshidid family and the opposition of the civilian and religious establishments.
The various factions initially agreed on a pact to share power under the nominal rule of al-Ikhshid's 11-year-old grandson, Abu'l-Fawaris Ahmad ibn Ali, with his uncle al-Hasan ibn Ubayd Allah, the governor of Palestine, as regent, Ibn al-Furat as vizier, and the slave-soldier (ghulmām) Shamul al-Ikhshidi as commander-in-chief. The pact quickly unravelled, as the personal and factional rivalries of the Ikhshidid elites came to the fore. Shamul lacked any real authority over the army, so that the Ikhshidiyya clashed with and expelled the Kafuriyya from Egypt. At the same time, Ibn al-Furat began arresting his rivals in the administration, thereby effectively bringing government and, crucially, the flow of tax revenue, to a halt. The regent al-Hasan ibn Ubayd Allah arrived from Palestine in November and occupied Fustat, imprisoning Ibn al-Furat; but his efforts to establish his authority failed, and in early 969 he abandoned the capital and returned to Palestine, leaving Egypt effectively without government.
The historian Yaacov Lev writes that faced with this impasse, the Egyptian elites were left only "with the choice of seeking outside intervention". Given the international situation at the time, this could only mean the Fatimids. The medieval sources report that letters from civilian and military leaders alike were sent to the Fatimid caliph al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah (r. 953–975) in Ifriqiya, where preparations for a new invasion of Egypt were already in full swing.
## Fatimid preparations
The first years of the reign of al-Mu'izz were dedicated to expanding his rule over the western Maghreb and in the conflict with the Byzantines in Sicily and southern Italy, but it is clear, according to historian Paul E. Walker, that al-Mu'izz "intended the conquest of Egypt from early in his reign". Already in 965/6, al-Mu'izz began storing provisions and making preparations for a new invasion of Egypt. By 965, his armies under Jawhar had triumphed over the Umayyads of the Caliphate of Córdoba, reversing their gains and restoring Fatimid authority over what is now western Algeria and Morocco, territories that had been originally conquered by Fatimid generals in the 910s and 920s. In Sicily, the Fatimid governors captured the last Byzantine strongholds, thereby completing the Muslim conquest of the island, and defeated a Byzantine expedition sent in response. Following these successes, a truce was concluded with Constantinople in 967, leaving both powers free to pursue their designs in the East: the Byzantines against the Hamdanid Emirate of Aleppo, and the Fatimids against Egypt. The Fatimid caliph made no secret of his ambition, even boasting to the Byzantine ambassador during the negotiations that the next time they met would be in Egypt.
### Military preparations
Unlike the rashly undertaken expeditions of his predecessors, al-Mu'izz carefully prepared for his Egyptian venture, investing time and enormous resources. According to the 15th-century Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi, the Caliph spent 24 million gold dinars for the purpose. Lev points out that the figure "should perhaps not be taken literally", but nevertheless "gives an idea of the resources available to the Fatimids" for the enterprise. The fact that al-Mu'izz was able to amass such enormous sums is an indicator of the Fatimid state's flourishing finances during this period, boosted by taxes levied on the trans-Saharan trade—some 400,000 dinars, half the Fatimids' annual revenue, derived from the Sijilmasa trade terminus in 951/2 alone—and the massive importation of high-quality gold from sub-Saharan Africa. These funds were augmented in 968 by special taxes levied for the imminent expedition.
In 966 Jawhar, fresh from his triumph in the Maghreb, was sent to the Kutama homeland in Lesser Kabylia to recruit men and raise funds: he returned to the Fatimid capital in December 968 with fresh Berber troops and half a million dinars. The governor of Barqa was ordered to prepare the route to Egypt, with new wells being dug along it at regular intervals. This meticulous preparation also reflects the increased strength and stability of the Fatimid regime. As Lev points out, "their first armies dispatched against Egypt lacked discipline and terrorized the population", while the army assembled by al-Mu'izz was "very large, well paid and disciplined". The venture was entrusted to Jawhar, who was given supreme authority for the expedition: the Caliph decreed that the governors of the towns along his route had to dismount in his presence and kiss his hand.
### Fatimid propaganda in Egypt
Anti-Abbasid and pro-Fatimid Isma'ili propaganda was widespread in the Islamic world during the early 10th century, with Isma'ili sympathizers even in the Abbasid court. In 904, the eventual first Fatimid caliph had sought refuge in Egypt, then ruled by the autonomous Tulunid dynasty, and had remained in hiding with sympathizers in Fustat for about a year, until the Abbasids recovered control of the province in early 905. While the Fatimid leader fled west to Sijilmasa, the brother of Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i was left behind to maintain contact with other parts of the Fatimid missionary propaganda network (the daʿwa).
The activity of Fatimid agents-provocateurs and sympathizers in Egypt is attested in the sources in 917/8, in the lead-up to the second invasion. In 919, the local governor arrested several people who were in correspondence with the invading Fatimid army. Following the failure of the initial invasion attempts, the Fatimids turned even more to propaganda and subversion. As a major commercial centre with an ethnically and confessionally diverse population, Fustat was easily infiltrated by agents of the Fatimid daʿwa. The activity of the daʿwa is shown in a marked rise in pro-Shi'a, or specifically Isma'ili, inscriptions among Egyptian tombstones in the decades after c. 912.
Remarkably, a delegation of Fatimid missionaries was publicly received by Kafur, and the daʿwa was allowed to establish itself and operate openly at Fustat, its agents stressing that "the Fatimid rule would commence only upon Kafur's death". The leader of the daʿwa, the wealthy merchant Abu Ja'far Ahmad ibn Nasr, maintained friendly relations with the local elites, including the vizier Ibn al-Furat, and had possibly bribed several of them. The city's merchants, who had a special interest in having stability, and thus normal trade, restored, were particularly susceptible to Ibn Nasr's arguments. In addition, some sources claim that the regent al-Hasan ibn Ubayd Allah was under Ibn Nasr's influence; when the troops rioted in Fustat, Ibn Nasr counselled al-Hasan to appeal to al-Mu'izz, and personally delivered a letter to that effect to the Caliph. Meanwhile, his lieutenant Jabir ibn Muhammad organized the daʿwa in the residential quarters of the city, distributing Fatimid banners to display upon the expected arrival of the Fatimid army. The Fatimids also received the aid of the Jewish convert Ya'qub ibn Killis, who had harboured ambitions to become vizier himself before being persecuted by his rival Ibn al-Furat. Ibn Killis fled to Ifriqiya in September 968, where he converted to Isma'ilism and assisted the Fatimids with his knowledge of Egyptian affairs. The Ikhshidid establishment was thoroughly penetrated; some Turkish commanders are reported to have written to al-Mu'izz inviting him to conquer Egypt, while even Ibn al-Furat is suspected by some modern historians to have joined the pro-Fatimid party.
Modern accounts of the events stress the importance of the Fatimids' "skilful political propaganda" (Marius Canard) that preceded the actual invasion. Coupled with the famine affecting Egypt and the political crisis of the Ikhshidid regime, this "intensive period of psychological and political preparation" (Thierry Bianquis) proved more decisive than military strength, and allowed the conquest to be carried out quickly and without much difficulty. The Fatimid cause was further helped by the terror inspired by news of the continuation of the Byzantine advance into northern Syria in 968: the Byzantines raided the area at will, and captured large numbers of Muslim prisoners, without facing serious opposition by the Abbasid-aligned Muslim rulers of the region.
## Invasion and conquest of Egypt
Jawhar set up his tent at Raqqada on 26 December 968, and the expedition began to assemble under his supervision. Caliph al-Mu'izz came almost daily to the growing camp from the nearby palace city of Mansuriya. The army assembled was reported by Arab sources to have numbered over a hundred thousand men, and was to be accompanied by a strong naval squadron, and a war treasury of over 1,000 chests filled with gold. On 6 February 969, the army set out, following a formal ceremony presided over by the Caliph in person, during which he bestowed full plenipotentiary powers on Jawhar. As a sign of this, only he and Jawhar were allowed to remain on their horses during the ceremony; all other dignitaries, including the Caliph's sons and brothers, were ordered to dismount and do Jawhar homage. To further underscore the authority bestowed on his new viceroy, al-Mu'izz accompanied the army on horseback for a while, and then sent the luxurious clothing he wore on that day to Jawhar. The army marched to Barqa, where Ibn Killis joined the army.
In May 969, the Fatimid army entered the Nile Delta. Jawhar occupied Alexandria without resistance and erected a fortified camp at Tarruja, on the western edge of the Delta, close to Alexandria, while his vanguard advanced towards the Fayyum oasis. Jawhar's troops did not meet any resistance as they entered the country, and the Fatimid general quickly became master of the west bank of the Nile, from the sea to the Fayyum. Then he stopped, awaiting the reaction of Fustat.
### Jawhar's amān
As the administrative centre and largest city of the country, Fustat was the key to controlling Egypt. The Fatimids' own experience made them well aware of this. In their previous invasions, although they had managed to occupy much of the country, their failure to capture Fustat determined the outcome of the campaign. Conversely, Lev points to the career of Muhammad ibn Tughj al-Ikhshid, and Jawhar's own success in 969, as evidence that "the conquest of the centre determined the fate of the country, although the provinces were not totally subjugated".
In early June, the ruling circles of Fustat sent a delegation to Jawhar with a list of demands, notably assurances for their personal safety and a guarantee of their properties and positions. The leader of the Ikhshidiyya, Nihrir al-Shuwayzan, being in command of the only sizeable military body, requested in addition that he be nominated as governor of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, a demand that Lev dismisses as "unrealistic" and revealing a "complete lack of understanding for the Fatimid particular religious sensitivities." The delegation comprised the leaders of the ashrāf families—the Husaynid Abu Ja'far Muslim, the Hasanid Abu Isma'il al-Rassi, and the Abbasid Abu'l-Tayyib—the chief qāḍī of Fustat, Abu Tahir al-Dhuhli, and the chief Fatimid agent, Ibn Nasr.
In exchange for the peaceful submission of the country, Jawhar, as the representative of al-Mu'izz, issued a writ of safe-conduct (amān) and a list of promises to the Egyptian population. As Lev points out, the amān was "a manifesto setting forth the political programme of the new regime and a piece of propaganda". Thus the amān opened by trying to justify the invasion by the need to protect the Muslims in the eastern parts of the Islamic world from their enemies—implying, but not explicitly naming, the Byzantines. The letter proposed a number of concrete improvements to be undertaken by the new regime, which revealed the detailed knowledge of Egyptian affairs provided to the Fatimids by their agents in the country, such as restoring order and securing the pilgrimage routes, or ending illegal taxes and improving the coinage. The pledge to defend the pilgrims was, in the words of the Orientalist Wilferd Madelung, "an open declaration of war" on the Qarmatians, whom Jawhar explicitly named and cursed in his letter. The Islamic religious classes (preachers, jurists, etc.) were placated by promises to pay them salaries, restore existing mosques and build new ones.
Most importantly, the letter ended by emphasizing the unity of Islam and the return to the "true sunna" of the Prophet and the early generations of Islam, thereby claiming a common ground espoused by the Sunni and Shi'a alike. Its phrasing concealed the Fatimids' true intentions, since according to Isma'ili doctrine, it was the Fatimid imam–caliph who was the true heir and interpreter of the "true sunna". It would quickly become apparent that, in the all-important topic of public rites and jurisprudence (fiqh), the Fatimids were intent on granting precedence to Ismai'ili doctrine. For the time being, the letter achieved its purpose: "on the whole", writes Lev, "it was a persuasive document appealing to wide sections of the Egyptian society".
### Occupation of Fustat
The delegation returned to Fustat on 26 June, bearing Jawhar's letter. Even before the envoys arrived, rumours spread that the military refused to accept it, and had resolved to fight and bar passage over the Nile. When the letter was publicly read, the officers in particular vociferously opposed it, and not even the intervention of the vizier Ibn al-Furat could persuade them to submit. Jawhar then declared his expedition a jihād against the Byzantines, and had the chief qāḍī confirm that anyone who barred his way was an enemy of the faith and could be killed. On the Egyptian side, Nihrir was chosen as common commander of the Ikhshidiyya and the Kafuriyya, who on 28 June occupied Rawda Island, which controlled passage over the pontoon bridge that connected Fustat with Giza on the western shore of the Nile, where Jawhar had set up camp.
The course of the subsequent conflict is unclear, as the sources report different details. The first engagement came on the 29th, but Jawhar was forced to withdraw. After that, Jawhar decided to cross the river elsewhere. Depending on the source, this was done with boats either provided by a group of defecting Ikhshidid ghilmān, or captured by Ja'far ibn Fallah from an Ikhshidid fleet sent from Lower Egypt to assist the garrison of Fustat. Using these boats, Ibn Fallah led a part of the Fatimid army across, although the exact site is unknown. According to al-Maqrizi, four Ikhshidid commanders had been sent with their troops to reinforce the possible landing points, but the Fatimid troops managed to cross the river. On 3 July, the two armies clashed, and the Fatimids prevailed. No details are known, but the entire Ikhshidid force sent from Giza to oppose the Fatimids was destroyed. The rest of the Ikhshidid troops then abandoned Rawda and dispersed, leaving Fustat and fleeing as far as Syria to seek safety.
Fustat was left in chaos by these events, but at that moment the Fatimid daʿwa came forth, made contact with the chief of police, and hung white Fatimid banners over the city in token of submission, while the police chief marched through the streets ringing a bell and carrying a banner proclaiming al-Mu'izz as caliph. The resistance of the troops had broken Jawhar's amān and made the city licit for plunder according to custom. Jawhar consented to renew the amān, charging Abu Ja'far Muslim with its upkeep, while Ibn al-Furat was tasked with confiscating the houses of the officers who had fled.
On 6 July, Ibn al-Furat and Abu Ja'far Muslim, accompanied by the leading merchants, led a crowd over the pontoon bridge to pay homage to Jawhar at Giza. On the same evening, the Fatimid army began crossing the bridge, and set up camp some 5 kilometres (3 mi) north of the city. On the next day, the distribution of alms was announced, financed by the treasure that Jawhar had borne with him: money was distributed to the poor by the army's qāḍī, Ali ibn al-Walid al-Ishbili. On 9 July, Jawhar led the Friday prayer in the Mosque of Amr in Fustat, where the Sunni preacher, dressed in Alid white and reading the unfamiliar phrases from a note, recited the khuṭba in the name of al-Mu'izz.
## Consolidation of Fatimid rule
### Pursuit of the Ikhshidid remnants and attempted expansion into Syria
The Ikhshidid remnants gathered in Palestine under al-Hasan ibn Ubayd Allah, while further north, the Byzantines captured Antioch after a long siege and forced the Hamdanids of Aleppo into vassalage. Jawhar therefore sent an army under Ja'far ibn Fallah to subdue the last Ikhshidid forces and, in the spirit of the promises to recommence the jihād, confront the Byzantines.
The Fatimid troops defeated and captured al-Hasan ibn Ubayd Allah in May 970, but the inhabitants of Damascus were enraged by the unruliness of the Kutama soldiers and resisted until November 970, when the city capitulated and was pillaged. From Damascus a Fatimid army moved north to besiege Antioch, only to be defeated by the Byzantines. At the same time, Ibn Fallah faced the attack of the Qarmatians, who allied themselves with the Arab Bedouin tribes of the region. Ibn Fallah was defeated and killed in battle in August 971, and Fatimid rule in Syria and Palestine collapsed, leaving the road to Egypt open.
The Fatimids were more successful in the Hejaz and the two Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, thanks in large part to liberal gifts of gold sent by al-Mu'izz. In Medina, where the Husaynids were ascendant, Abu Ja'far Muslim held great influence, and the khuṭba was proclaimed for the first time in the Fatimid Caliph's name in 969, or according to Ibn al-Jawzi and Ibn al-Athir, 970. The Hasanid Ja'far ibn Muhammad al-Hasani, who had just established himself as ruler of Mecca in c. 968, is said to have proclaimed the khuṭba in al-Mu'izz's name as soon as news of the conquest of Egypt reached him, but Najm al-Din Umar reports of the dispatch of a joint Fatimid–Medinan expedition in 972 to force Ja'far to pronounce the khuṭba on behalf of the Fatimid Caliph; Ibn al-Jawzi and Ibn al-Athir put the recitation of the Friday prayer as late as 974, while al-Maqrizi, relying on lost Fatimid documents, in 975. Recognition of Fatimid overlordship by the Hejazi ashrāf, expressed through the naming of the Fatimid caliph in the khuṭba, and the resumption of the Hajj caravans from 974/5 on, were major boosts to the Fatimid dynasty's claims to legitimacy.
### Jawhar as viceroy of Egypt
While the capture of Fustat, the most important settlement and the seat of the administration, was of critical importance, Egypt was not yet wholly under Fatimid control. While Ja'far ibn Fallah moved into Syria, Jawhar remained in Egypt to consolidate Fatimid authority as viceroy or proconsul. His tasks were to restore an orderly government, stabilize the new regime, confront the remnants of the defeated Ikhshidid troops, and extend Fatimid rule to the north (the Nile Delta area) and south (Upper Egypt).
#### Treatment of the Ikhshidid troops
Already in 969, Jawhar accepted the submission of fourteen leaders of the Ikhshidiyya and the Kafuriyya, with some 5,000–6,000 of their men; the commanders were arrested and the troops disarmed. The properties of the Ikhshidid troops, commanders and rank-and-file alike, were also systematically confiscated by the new regime.
The Fatimids distrusted the loyalty of the former Ikhshidid troops and refused to incorporate them as regulars into their army. Exceptionally, some former Ikhshidid commanders were employed in the early years of the new regime to suppress revolts in Egypt due to their superior local knowledge. The disbanded rank-and-file soldiers on the other hand were exploited as a "reservoir of fighting manpower" (Lev) for emergencies, especially since they were deprived of any other means of livelihood. Many were recruited to confront the Qarmatian invasion in 971, but after the Qarmatian invasion was repulsed, Jawhar arrested 900 of them, who were not released until they were recruited against a second Qarmatian invasion in 974. Former Ikhshidid troops were recruited to shore up the Fatimid military following heavy defeats as late as 981. Many more Ikhshidid troops, who had fled Egypt, joined the Qarmatians instead.
#### Domestic administration and reforms
In his domestic policies, Jawhar had to be careful to avoid creating resentment among the local elites, and to ensure the continuation of an orderly administration. As a result, he largely left the experienced personnel from the previous regime in place: Ibn al-Furat remained in office as vizier, as did the chief qāḍī and the chief preacher, as well as the heads of the administrative bureaux; Jawhar merely appointed a Kutama supervisor to keep them in line. Jawhar also set up weekly sessions to hear grievances (maẓālim), certain taxes were abolished, and properties illegally confiscated by the treasury were returned to their owners.
In religious matters, Jawhar trod carefully, and Isma'ili rites were only gradually introduced. At the Mosque of Amr, the Sunni rites were retained for the moment, and only at the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, which served as a congregational mosque for the Fatimid army's encampment, was the Fatimid call to prayer (the adhān) introduced in March 970. Nevertheless, tensions erupted in October 969, when the Fatimid army's qāḍī ended the Ramadan fast a day earlier than the Sunni chief qāḍī. The Fatimid regime also imposed a stricter moral code, reflecting both by the Fatimids' own puritanism, as well as a deliberate attempt to reverse the supposed libertinism of the Ikhshidids. These measures contributed to the regime's popularity among the Sunni religious classes, but also provoked some resistance.
Jawhar also began erecting a new capital (that would become Cairo) for his master at the site of his encampment. Like its Ifriqiyan counterpart, it was originally named al-Mansuriya; even the names of certain gates and city quarters were copied. Its centrepiece, the al-Azhar Mosque, was begun by Jawhar on 4 April 970, and completed in the summer of 972.
#### Pacification of the provinces and the Qarmatian invasion
As early as November/December 969, Jawhar sent troops under a former Ikhshidid commander, Ali ibn Muhammad al-Khazin, to combat brigandage in Upper Egypt. In the Delta, the situation was more volatile. The marshy terrain and the complex social and religious divisions in the local population were unfamiliar to his Kutama, so that Jawhar initially entrusted former Ikhshidid officers with operations as well. Muzahim ibn Ra'iq, who with his men had submitted to the Fatimids, was appointed governor of Farama, and the former Ikhshidid commander Tibr was sent against Tinnis, where a revolt against heavy taxation had broken out. Soon, however, Tibr joined the rebels and became their leader, encouraging the locals to refuse payment of their taxes. After generous blandishments failed to make him return to the fold, Jawhar sent another army against Tinnis. Tibr fled to Syria, but was captured and executed by the Fatimids.
In September 971, Jawhar had to confront the Qarmatians, who, after their victory over Ibn Fallah, invaded Egypt. Instead of advancing directly on Fustat, however, the Qarmatians turned to the eastern Delta. Their approach rekindled the rebellion in Tinnis, and the entire region rose in revolt. A Fatimid army briefly retook Farama, but in the face of the uprising it had to withdraw to Fustat, with the Qarmatians in pursuit. Nevertheless, this delayed the Qarmatian attack on Fustat for two months, and gave Jawhar time to prepare a line of fortifications and a trench at Ayn Shams, north of the capital, stretching for 10 kilometres (6 mi) from the Nile to the Muqattam hills. The Fatimid general called almost the entire male population of Fustat to arms, and in two fierce battles on 22 and 24 December 971, despite heavy losses, managed to defeat his opponents. The Qarmatians broke and retreated back into Palestine, many being killed during their retreat for the bounty set on them by Jawhar. Two days after the battle, reinforcements arrived from Ifriqiya under al-Hasan ibn Ammar, securing the Fatimids' grip over the country.
The Qarmatian invasion not only breathed new life into the revolt at Tinnis and the Delta, but led to a general surge in anti-Fatimid activity. In Upper Egypt, the Kilabi leader Abd al-Aziz ibn Ibrahim, formerly an ally, now rose in revolt in the name of the Abbasid caliph. An expedition under the Nubian commander Bishara was sent against him, and he was captured and brought to Cairo in a cage in early 973.
The revolt in the Delta persisted for a few years, especially as Jawhar could not spare the necessary resources to confront it. It was only in the summer of 972 that troops under Ibn Ammar began a brutal suppression campaign. The Qarmatians sent a fleet to assist Tinnis, but in September/October 972 seven Qarmatian ships and 500 crew were captured by the Fatimid forces. Al-Maqrizi puts this a year later, in June/July 973, so there may have been two Qarmatian naval expeditions against Tinnis, which accords with Ibn Zulaq's claim that al-Mu'izz scored two naval victories against them. Tinnis eventually submitted, paying a million silver dirhams as a ransom to avoid reprisals.
#### Assessment
Jawhar's rule was more or less successful in securing control of Egypt, and made important headway in having the new regime accepted by the local population, chiefly by the prudence and restraint shown in imposing Isma'ili doctrine (an area in which Jawhar's practice contrasted sharply with that followed by al-Mu'izz, once the caliph arrived in Egypt). However, the disastrous campaign into Syria, the repulse of the Qarmatian invasion, the continued process of pacifying Egypt, and the construction of a new capital, entailed an enormous expenditure of manpower and financial resources. The tumults of these years also disrupted the ongoing recovery of Egyptian agriculture, and the administration's ability to tax it. As a result, in the words of Michael Brett, "three years after the triumphal entry of Jawhar into Fustat, the expectation, or hope, of a conquest spreading as far as Baghdad had been dashed".
Apart from Ramla, which was reoccupied in May 972, the bulk of Syria remained outside Fatimid control. Indeed, the Fatimids had to confront a second Qarmatian invasion of Egypt in 974. Once again the Delta was captured by the Qarmatians, while a second force, led by none other than Abu Ja'far Muslim's brother Akhu Muslim, bypassed Cairo and encamped between Asyut and Akhmim. Many scions of the most prominent ashrāf families flocked to join him. Once more the populace of the capital was called to arms, and the Qarmatians fought off in a battle just north of Ayn Shams. Only under al-Mu'izz's successor, al-Aziz Billah (r. 975–996), did the Fatimids manage to capture Damascus and extend their control to most of Syria.
### Transfer of the Fatimid court to Egypt
Following the repulsion of the Qarmatian attack, and despite the continuing local unrest, Jawhar judged Egypt to be sufficiently pacified to invite his master, al-Mu'izz, to come to Egypt. The Fatimid caliph began preparations to move with his entire court, treasure, and even the coffins of his ancestors from Ifriqiya to Egypt. After long preparations, the Fatimid ruler and his entourage left Ifriqiyan al-Mansuriya on 5 August 972 for Sardaniya near Aïn Djeloula, where, for the next four months, those Fatimid followers who wanted to follow their leader came to join him. There, on 2 October, al-Mu'izz appointed Buluggin ibn Ziri as his viceroy in Ifriqiya. On 14 November, the huge column of men and animals set off for Egypt, arriving at Alexandria on 30 May 973, and Giza on 7 June. On the way, he was met by a delegation of notables headed by Abu Ja'far Muslim, who accompanied him on the final stage of his journey. On 10 June, al-Mu'izz crossed the Nile. Ignoring Fustat and the festive reception organized for him there, he went straight for his new capital, which he renamed as al-Qāhira al-Muʿizzīya ("the Victorious City of al-Mu'izz"), a name which in English was corrupted to Cairo.
The arrival of the Fatimid caliph and his court was a major turning point in Egyptian history. Already during the preceding Tulunid and Ikhshidid regimes, the country had become, for the first time since the Ptolemies, the seat of an independent polity, and had emerged as an autonomous regional power. Nevertheless, the ambitions of these regimes were regional and tied to the personalities of their rulers, who remained in the orbit of the Abbasid court; whereas the Fatimid regime represented a power at once imperial and revolutionary, with a religious mandate that gave them ecumenical pretensions in direct opposition to the Abbasids. This event also had repercussions for the development of Twelver Shi'ism and Sunnism alike in the eastern Islamic lands: with the Fatimids emerging as a serious claimant to the leadership of the Islamic world, the other Shi'a sects—most notably the Twelvers—were compelled to differentiate themselves from the Isma'ili Fatimids, thus accelerating the ongoing process of their separation into a distinct community, marked by its own doctrine, ritual and festivals. In turn, this led to a similar process among the Sunnis (the so-called "Sunni Revival"), culminating in the codification of Sunni doctrine and the anti-Shi'ite manifestos of the Abbasid caliph al-Qadir (r. 991–1031). The result was a hardening of the Shi'a–Sunni divide into mutually exclusive groups. As the historian Hugh Kennedy writes, "it was no longer possible to be simply a Muslim: one was either Sunni or Shi'ite". Even though the Fatimids ultimately failed in their ambitions—their rule was ended by Saladin in 1171, who restored Sunnism and Abbasid suzerainty to Egypt—they transformed Egypt, and their capital, Cairo, founded to be the seat of a universal empire, has since then been one of the main centres of the Islamic world.
|
1,818,580 |
California State Route 76
| 1,171,611,208 |
Highway in California
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[
"Roads in San Diego County, California",
"State highways in California",
"U.S. Route 395"
] |
State Route 76 (SR 76) is a state highway 52.63 miles (84.70 km) long in the U.S. state of California. It is a much used east–west route in the North County region of San Diego County that begins in Oceanside near Interstate 5 (I-5) and continues east. The highway is a major route through the region, passing through the community of Bonsall and providing access to Fallbrook. East of the junction with I-15, SR 76 goes through Pala and Pauma Valley before terminating at SR 79.
A route along the corridor has existed since the early 20th century, as has the bridge over the San Luis Rey River near Bonsall. The route was added to the state highway system in 1933, and was officially designated by the California State Legislature as SR 76 in the 1964 state highway renumbering. The section of the highway through Oceanside and Bonsall is mostly a four-lane expressway; east of I-15, the roadway is mostly a two-lane highway. Originally, the entire highway was two lanes wide; west of Bonsall, the route was widened in stages, after decades of funding shortages, planning, and litigation. The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) maintained plans to expand the entire length of the highway west of I-15 to an expressway, and as of May 2017, construction between Bonsall and I-15 was complete.
## Route description
The roadway carrying the SR 76 designation begins at County Route S21 (CR S21) in Oceanside, although Caltrans does not consider the road west of I-5 to be part of the route, and it is not in the legal definition. There is soon an interchange with I-5, after which SR 76 becomes a four-lane expressway known as the San Luis Rey Mission Expressway. From I-5 to Mission Avenue, the highway parallels the San Luis Rey River until it passes by the Oceanside Municipal Airport. During this stretch, SR 76 intersects Loretta Street, Canyon Drive, Benet Road, Airport Road, and Foussat Road. There are two overpasses: one over Mission Avenue, and one over El Camino Real, before the road intersects Douglas Drive, the main road to the San Luis Rey gate of Camp Pendleton. After an intersection with Rancho Del Oro Road, SR 76 passes over Mission Avenue again before intersecting with Old Grove Road, Frazee Road, a turnoff into the Towne Center North shopping center, and College Boulevard.
As it enters rural Oceanside, SR 76 intersects with North Santa Fe Avenue (CR S14), Guajome Lake Road (near Guajome County Park), and Melrose Drive. SR 76 intersects the southern segment of CR S13, known as East Vista Way, and passes over the San Luis Rey River on roughly parallel bridges before an intersection at North River Road. The highway passes through Bonsall, intersecting Via Montellano, Olive Hill Road, and Throughbred Lane. SR 76 then meets the northern segment of CR S13, known as South Mission Road, while heading north into Fallbrook; SR 76 is the primary road connecting the two portions of CR S13. Here, SR 76 becomes known as Pala Road. It intersects Via Monserate and Gird Road south of Fallbrook before crossing the former routing of US 395 and the current routing of I-15 in the community of Pala Mesa Village.
SR 76 then goes through Pala and the Pala Indian Reservation, providing access to the Pala Casino and intersecting CR S16, the turnoff to the Pala Mission and Temecula. Continuing to parallel the San Luis Rey River, SR 76 passes by the Wilderness Gardens County Park before entering the community of Pauma Valley and meeting the southern terminus of CR S7 (Nate Harrison Grade), a dirt road leading into Palomar Mountain State Park. SR 76 intersects the southern leg of CR S6 (Valley Center Road), leading to Valley Center and Escondido. East of the small Yuima Indian Reservation, it then encounters the northern leg of CR S6, the southern approach to the Palomar Observatory and Palomar Mountain State Park, as well as the community of La Jolla Amago. It then briefly passes through the Cleveland National Forest and meets the eastern terminus of CR S7, the eastern approach to Palomar Mountain. SR 76 then passes along the shores of Lake Henshaw before terminating at the intersection with SR 79 at Morettis Junction, southeast of Lake Henshaw.
From I-5 to I-15, SR 76 is part of the California Freeway and Expressway System, and west of Bonsall is part of the National Highway System, a network of highways that are considered essential to the country's economy, defense, and mobility by the Federal Highway Administration. SR 76 is legally eligible to be included in the State Scenic Highway System, but it is not officially designated as a scenic highway by the California Department of Transportation. The part of the highway from the western terminus to Douglas Drive is also named for Tony Zeppetella, an Oceanside police officer killed while on duty performing a traffic stop in 2003. In 2018, SR 76 had an annual average daily traffic (AADT) of 1,950 between East Palomar Road and the eastern terminus at SR 79, and 55,000 between I-5 and Loretta Street in Oceanside, the latter of which was the highest AADT for the highway.
## History
The road through the San Luis Rey Valley was planned as early as 1889 and was constructed during the early 20th century. It was added to the state highway system in 1933, while the condition of the highway continued to improve. The San Luis Rey Mission Expressway was eventually constructed during the 1990s and 2000s, and efforts to extend the expressway east to I-15 were completed during the 2010s.
### Original road
Plans by the City of Oceanside for a road east through the San Luis Rey Valley to Fallbrook date from June 1889, and included a bridge over the San Luis Rey River. Construction on the bridge over the river at Bonsall had commenced by October 1906, and the bridge was to be 250 feet (76 m) long. In November, the road to the bridge was under construction; originally, the bridge was to serve the road from Escondido to Temecula. A survey was commissioned in 1908 to replace the road along the south bank of the river with one along the north bank to Pala, as the former was sandy and difficult for travel. State funding issues for the Pala road by May 1912 that prevented completion, though the planned road had been surveyed from Bonsall, where it met with the Escondido road, to Oceanside.
Flooding in January 1916 resulted in the closing of the pre-existing road between Bonsall and Pala; part of it reopened in October. Nevertheless, six miles (9.7 km) of the road between Pauma Valley and Pala did not reopen for two years. Meanwhile, a road from Pala to Warner Springs neared completion in March 1918, though a bridge would be necessary for the road to be usable during the winter months. By mid-1921, plans were underway to pave Mission Avenue through the Oceanside city limits. The first three miles (4.8 km) east from Oceanside were paved by November 1924. The Bonsall Bridge over the San Luis Rey River was completed in 1925, and opened in 1926 as the county's largest bridge at the time; it served as part of the road from San Diego to Elsinore. The Pala road was constructed by 1930, although it was not paved east of Pala.
The road that extended from US 101 in Oceanside all the way to SR 79 near Lake Henshaw was originally added to the state highway system in 1933, but was not designated as legislative Route 195 until 1935. By 1936, US 395 was signed along what would become SR 76 through Bonsall, as part of the route between Elsinore and San Diego. In 1943, work began on widening the approaches to the Bonsall bridge. US 395 had been shifted east away from Bonsall by 1949. SR 76 was signed by 1954. During the 1964 state highway renumbering, Route 195 was legally redesignated as State Route 76; at that time, the legal definition was updated to reflect the new designation of I-5, replacing US 101.
### Delays and postponement
The original idea for constructing a replacement for Mission Avenue dates from 1950. By 1961, there were plans to make SR 76 a freeway from Oceanside to Fallbrook Road, and an expressway from there to US 395. The following year, the new Highway 76 Association formed a committee to promote the upgrade of the road into Pauma Valley. In 1963, more specific plans were proposed by the Highway Development Association initiative, including making the portions from Foussat Road and the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia and from Vista Way to Mission Road an expressway, and widening the part of the highway in Oceanside. In 1964, the state allocated funds for the widening of SR 76 to four lanes in Oceanside, and in October 1965, the first portion of the widening from Carey Road to Frontier Drive entered the bidding phase. The next part of the widening entered the bidding phase in December 1968, and extended from Frontier Drive to near the Mission.
Caltrans engineer Jacob Dekema announced in April 1969 that construction on SR 76 and the nearby SR 78 between I-5 and US 395 would be delayed until work on I-5 and US 395 was underway, or at least until 1976. Nevertheless, a widening project was commissioned in 1970 between Pauma Reservation Road and Cole Grade Road, well east of US 395. The next year, construction began on a new interchange between the future routing of SR 76 and I-5, near Oceanside Harbor and Camp Del Mar in Camp Pendleton. The expansion of SR 76 appeared on the Comprehensive Planning Organization (CPO) regional government plan in late 1974. At that time, there was an effort by the City of Oceanside to have SR 76 included as a scenic highway, but SR 76 has not been included in the system. The Chamber of Commerce decided to continue efforts to have SR 76 expanded at the end of 1974.
In January 1975, Caltrans presented plans to realign SR 76 away from Mission Avenue and move it to the south side of the San Luis Rey River from I-5 to Frontier Drive. One member of the Tri-Cities Taxpayers' League suggested that the freeway be built on the northern side of the river, and follow the river all the way east to I-15. Following concerns that the project would be cancelled due to lack of state funding, the California Highway Commission (CHC) stated that the proposal was still being considered. The City of Oceanside raised concerns about the congestion on Mission Avenue, as well as the realignment being a part of the city master plan. After this, at the start of the next year, the CHC decided to keep the proposal, though there were concerns that construction would be delayed due to the state financial crisis. Caltrans stated a few months later that SR 76 would be delayed because of the funding issues and the relatively low levels of traffic that would not support building a freeway. Following this, State Senator John Stull alleged that Caltrans head Adriana Gianturco was purposefully delaying the project by delaying the release of the environmental impact report. A petition drive began soon after, supported by many North County leaders, with the exception of Bonsall due to concerns about a full freeway running through the community.
From 1974 to 1977, Oceanside police kept track of over 1,000 accidents that occurred along SR 76. A citizen action group known as Concerned Citizens for Highway 76 formed soon after. Caltrans began holding hearings again in 1979, proposing the building of an expressway as opposed to a freeway or to widening Mission Avenue. At one hearing, local officials criticized the delay, while others criticized the routing, the decision to build an expressway instead of a freeway, and building a route through an environmentally sensitive area. In May 1980, the state Assembly Transportation Committee approved a resolution that requested an answer from the governor at the time, Jerry Brown, and Caltrans as to why certain projects, including SR 76, had not been started.
In the meantime, the Oceanside Development Agency recommended that the new highway be extended west to Pacific Street to aid in redeveloping the downtown area. The San Diego Regional Coastal Commission disagreed with constructing the highway, among other development proposals for downtown Oceanside, due to concerns about destroying habitat along the river and the marsh areas. Soon after, in October 1980, the California Coastal Commission recommended removing the realignment of the freeway from plans entirely, on environmental grounds.
### Widening and realignment
In 1983, the introduction of a federal gasoline tax of five cents per gallon (one cent per liter) added more funding to complete projects in San Diego County, among other places. From that revenue, \$5 million (about \$ in dollars) was allocated to rebuilding the Bonsall bridge and realigning the highway. Issues cited with the old bridge included the sharp turns at either end and its narrow width, though some members of the community hoped that the old bridge would remain standing as a historical landmark, and a pedestrian bridge. County Supervisor Paul Eckert commissioned a campaign to leave the bridge standing a week later. Plans to replace the bridge were delayed by April, due to issues acquiring the land necessary for the new bridge.
Caltrans tentatively approved the westernmost 2.5 miles (4.0 km) of the SR 76 widening project in May, while noting that there were several more steps in the legal process necessary before construction began. Two years later, concerns were expressed by environmental groups over the potential destruction of the habitat of the least Bell's vireo songbird by the construction of SR 76 and other projects in the region. In 1986, the bird was added to the federal endangered species register. The next year, the Oceanside Jaycees group collected 12,000 signatures supporting the construction of the freeway immediately. At that time, the fatality rate on SR 76 was 222 percent above that of any other state highway in California. The petitions were given to the office of then-Governor George Deukmejian. In November 1987, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved the project, on condition that Caltrans purchase more land to set up habitat for environmental mitigation.
Funds for the new Bonsall bridge were approved by the California Transportation Commission (CTC) in October 1988, and construction was scheduled to begin in early 1989. In November 1989, the California Coastal Commission gave the go-ahead for the realignment of SR 76 in western Oceanside, from I-5 to Frontier Drive. However, in February 1990, the Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, and League for Coastal Protection filed a lawsuit to have the approval overturned, citing concerns over the destruction of habitat. The Bonsall bridge was completed in early 1990, while the old bridge became a National Historic Place. In 1992, the City of Oceanside offered to purchase land as additional habitat for the songbird, even though it was not a party to the lawsuit. The following year, the city council voted to use the Lawrence Canyon land for commercial use instead of for the environmental mitigation, thus stalling the project. Following this, the CTC rejected the proposal to build the highway, requiring Caltrans to find another parcel to use for constructing habitat. The CTC did approve the proposal a month later, provided that this land was found before construction began. In October, the city council decided to use the Lawrence Canyon land for mitigation after all. Nevertheless, a city councilman raised concerns that the expressway would not be adequate to handle 2010 traffic levels.
The four-lane expressway bypass of Oceanside was constructed beginning in 1994. The first four miles (6.4 km) from I-5 to Foussat Road opened to traffic in late 1995. The cost of this portion was \$10 million (about \$ in dollars); at that time, completion of the rest of the route was expected for 2008. The rerouting of SR 76 away from Mission Avenue resulted in a decrease in business for establishments located along the old routing. On June 12, 1996, the groundbreaking ceremony for the second phase of the project took place, by which time the completion date for the entire roadway had slipped to 2010. This phase between Foussat Road and Jefferies Ranch Road was finished in late 1999. Because the expressway was constructed on top of Mission Avenue east of Old Grove Road, the former was rerouted onto a new alignment that connected to Frazee Road. Mission Avenue was thus fragmented, and does not exist between Frazee Road and Jefferies Ranch Road, where the designation resumes.
### East of Oceanside
By 2002, Caltrans had two proposals for the part of the widening project between East Vista Way and Mission Road: building the new highway on top of the old one, or constructing a new roadway to the south of the San Luis Rey River. Concerns arose that the TransNet local sales tax would not be extended by voters, leading to the cancellation of that project. The San Diego Association of Governments included the widening east to Bonsall in the regional plan in 2003, but indicated that the portion from Bonsall to I-15 would be dependent on the availability of funding. Residents of Fallbrook and Bonsall criticized the fact that SR 76 was one of the few TransNet projects that was not to be completed by the expiration of the tax in 2008. The city of Oceanside proposed plans for grade-separated interchanges with College Boulevard and Melrose Drive in 2004, as part of a proposal to convert the expressway through Oceanside to a freeway. After complaints from residents, these proposals were tabled.
After TransNet was renewed in November 2004, planning continued for widening the remaining portion of SR 76 west of I-15, due to the frequent accidents that occurred on the eastern portion, although some claimed that the habits of drivers were at fault. The 2007 environmental impact report recommended constructing the new roadway along the route of the old one, rather than moving the entire highway south.
Meanwhile, congestion east of I-15 increased with the opening of four new casinos near Pala. The Pala Indian band was required to pay for the costs to improve the road to mitigate the increased traffic levels from their proposed expansion. Construction began on widening the highway in April 2008, and in March 2009, two lanes of a realigned 1.3-mile-long (2.1 km) segment of SR 76 opened east of I-15. Initially, only two lanes were open, with the other two lanes of this new four-lane divided highway planned to open in September 2009. This improvement was intended to reduce accidents on a stretch of road that carried over 12,000 motorists per day, many headed for either the Pala Indian casino or a new gravel quarry that had recently opened. The casino and quarry owners each paid for half of the \$26 million (about \$ in dollars) cost of the new road. Even after this, in 2009, the corner of SR 76 and Palomar Mountain Road was determined to be the place in the county with the most motorcycle accidents.
Construction started on widening SR 76 between Melrose Drive and South Mission Road in January 2010 to four lanes, funded by the federal and state governments and by TransNet revenue. The project included building a second bridge over the San Luis Rey River. Discussion on whether the route of the highway should go south or north of the river east of Mission Road began later that year, with residents expressing concerns about being able to make left turns. In June 2011, Caltrans decided to use the existing roadway as the path, but agreed to build traffic signals at Via Monserate, South Mission Road, Gird Road, and Old Highway 395. For environmental mitigation, Caltrans purchased the parcel known as Rancho Lilac, which was 902 acres (365 ha). The second Bonsall bridge was finished by April 2012. The westbound lanes between Melrose Drive and Mission Road opened to traffic in October, with the entire roadway projected to be complete by the end of the year. The total cost of the entire widening project east of Melrose Drive is projected to be \$371 million.
A request by the city of Oceanside to restore access to Jefferies Ranch Road from SR 76 was declined by Caltrans in late 2012, due to concerns about future expressway expansion to six lanes. In May 2013, construction at the I-15 and SR 76 interchange uncovered a Bison latifrons fossil. Revisions to the interchange were finished in August 2013. The final portion east to I-15 was contracted out in August, and construction was to begin soon afterward and extend until 2017, at a cost of \$201 million. In August 2016, traffic was to switch from the existing roadway to the newly constructed one west of I-15, from Gird Road to Old Highway 395. This would allow the older roadway to be reconfigured to carry westbound traffic, while the new roadway would handle eastbound traffic. The new roadway was described as having fewer turns than the older road, which would increase safety. The expansion of the road to four lanes was completed in May 2017; this meant that from about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) east of the interchange with I-15 west to CR S21 the roadway was four lanes wide, including the widening that had been paid for by the owners of a rock quarry.
## Major intersections
## See also
|
22,673,079 |
Hey Stephen
| 1,166,410,622 |
2008 song by Taylor Swift
|
[
"2008 songs",
"Country pop songs",
"Song recordings produced by Chris Rowe",
"Song recordings produced by Nathan Chapman (record producer)",
"Song recordings produced by Taylor Swift",
"Songs written by Taylor Swift",
"Taylor Swift songs"
] |
"Hey Stephen" is a song written and recorded by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift for her second studio album, Fearless (2008). It is a country pop and teen pop song about an unrequited love, inspired by a real-life infatuation. Produced by Swift and Nathan Chapman, "Hey Stephen" features drums inspired by girl-group records, an upright bass that propels its groove, and a subdued Hammond B-3 organ. In reviews of Fearless, critics who picked "Hey Stephen" as an album highlight praised what they deemed a catchy melody and earnest lyrics about adolescent feelings. The song peaked at number 94 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Swift included "Hey Stephen" in the set list of her first headlining tour, the Fearless Tour (2009–2010). Following the 2019 dispute regarding the ownership of Swift's back catalog, she re-recorded the song as "Hey Stephen (Taylor's Version)" for her re-recorded album Fearless (Taylor's Version) (2021). "Hey Stephen (Taylor's Version)" charted in Australia and Canada. In retrospective rankings, some reviewers remained positive but others regarded the track as generic.
## Background and writing
Taylor Swift wrote songs for her second studio album, Fearless, while touring as an opening act for other country musicians to promote her self-titled debut studio album during 2007–2008, when she was 17–18 years old. Continuing the romantic themes of her first album, Swift wrote songs about love and personal experiences from the perspective of a teenage girl to ensure her fans could relate to Fearless. To this extent, Swift said that nearly every album track had a "face" that she associated with it. The end product is a collection of songs about the challenges of love with prominent high-school and fairy-tale lyrical imagery. Swift and producer Nathan Chapman recorded over 50 songs for Fearless, and "Hey Stephen" was one of the 13 tracks that made the final cut. They produced the track, and Justin Niebank mixed it at Blackbird Studios in Nashville. In the album liner notes, she included the secret message for the song as "Love and Theft", referencing a country-music group who had opened shows for her.
When asked by Rolling Stone's Austin Scaggs if Stephen was a real person, Swift replied, "I have no issue with naming names. My personal goal is for my songs to be so detailed that the guy the song is written about knows it's about him." The song's inspiration was Love and Theft's member Stephen Barker Liles, with whom she had had a friendly relationship. After Fearless was released, Swift texted him about the song. She recalled it was "fun" to put a personal confession on the album, which she was "going to have to deal with", and it was "interesting" to know what Liles had to say about it. Liles spoke to The Boot (2009): "I was very relieved when it turned out to be a nice song, and it's actually one of the nicest things anybody's ever done for me." He wrote "Try to Make It Anyway" as an answer song to Swift when they were touring together and released it for download and streaming in 2011.
## Releases
"Hey Stephen" was released as an album cut on Fearless, on November 11, 2008, by Big Machine Records. It entered and peaked at number 94 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart dated November 29, 2008. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the song gold, denoting 500,000 units based on sales and streaming. Swift performed the track live at her Australian concert debut at the Tivoli in Brisbane on March 5, 2009. "Hey Stephen" was part of the mid-show acoustic session on Swift's first headlining tour, the Fearless Tour (2009–2010). Midway through the performance, Swift would go down the aisle to greet and hug her fans. She performed "Hey Stephen" as a "surprise song" outside the regular setlist on the September 18, 2018, St. Louis concert of the Reputation Stadium Tour and the May 14, 2023, Philadelphia concert of the Eras Tour.
After signing a new contract with Republic Records, Swift began re-recording her first six studio albums in November 2020. The decision followed a 2019 public dispute between Swift and talent manager Scooter Braun, who acquired Big Machine Records, including the masters of Swift's albums which the label had released. By re-recording the albums, Swift had full ownership of the new masters, which enabled her to control the licensing of her songs for commercial use and therefore substituted the Big Machine–owned masters. Swift and Christopher Rowe produced the re-recorded track, which was recorded by David Payne at Black Bird and Prime Recording Studios in Nashville. Rowe recorded Swift's lead vocals at her home studio in London, and Serban Ghenea mixed the track at MixStar Studios in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
The re-recording of "Hey Stephen", subtitled "Taylor's Version", was released as part of Fearless's re-recording, Fearless (Taylor's Version). Swift released a snippet of "Hey Stephen (Taylor's Version)" on her Twitter account on April 8, 2021, one day before Republic Records released Fearless (Taylor's Version). "Hey Stephen (Taylor's Version)" charted in Australia (86) and Canada (68). It peaked at number 105 on the Billboard Global 200. In the United States, "Hey Stephen (Taylor's Version)" peaked at number one on Bubbling Under Hot 100 and number 28 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart.
## Music and lyrics
"Hey Stephen" is a country pop and teen pop song. It features a production that critics described as "smooth" and "playful". Instruments on the song include a gut string guitar, an upright bass that propels its groove, and a subdued Hammond B-3. The track incorporates a drum beat that Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone found reminiscent of the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" (1963), and Maria Sherman of NPR Music said it evoked classic Motown girl-group records. Swift uses ad-libs and chuckles before the final refrain. The track both starts and ends with Swift humming; it ends with her humming to the band and steady finger snaps. In the original 2008 song, the finger snaps are credited to country musician Martina McBride's children and their friends, who visited Swift one day when she was at the recording studio of McBride's husband, John. The re-recorded "Hey Stephen (Taylor's Version)" features the same arrangement, which led to The New York Times journalist Joe Coscarelli commenting it sounded "more remastered than rerecorded". Michael A. Lee, a professor in commercial music, identified some minor changes: Swift's voice is richer and less breathy, and the cymbals in the break are louder.
The lyrics are about an unrequited love for a seemingly out-of-reach boy. The title character is a boy in whom "all the girls" are interested, and although they toss stones at his window to get his attention, Swift's character tells Stephen that she is the only one "waiting there even when it's cold". "Hey Stephen" incorporates some lyrical motifs that recur in many of Swift's other songs, such as rain ("Can't help it if I wanna kiss you in the rain so") and waiting for somebody by the window. At one point, Swift sings, "Hey Stephen, why are people always leaving/ I think you and I should stay the same". Biographer Liv Spencer attributed this lyric to the impact of Swift's touring that "sometimes means too many goodbyes". In the bridge, Swift's character mentions the reason why Stephen should date her: "All those other girls, well they're beautiful, but would they write a song for you?" Critic Ken Tucker found this lyric to showcase Swift's "confident sense of humor", and musicologist James E. Perone commented that it aligned Swift with the 1970s singer-songwriter tradition of mentioning their songwriting profession in their own works. In a 2021 article for Gigwise, journalist Kelsey Barnes said "Hey Stephen" was an example of Swift's songwriting tropes: the track reflected her desire to be "seen, understood, and loved by others", a recurring theme on many of her later songs. For Barnes, it offered a glimpse into Swift's personal life before it became sensationalized in the press.
## Critical reception
In album reviews of Fearless, many critics picked "Hey Stephen" as a highlight. They positively remarked how "Hey Stephen" portrays universal teenage feelings towards love and infatuation—Craig S. Sermon of the Telegram & Gazette said, "Swift's loose and playful confession is enough to make anybody blush." Others praised Swift's songwriting for creating what they deemed a catchy melody. Larry Rodgers in The Arizona Republic wrote the track was "hummable pop" and Chris Richards in The Washington Post praised its "irresistible smile" that could "permanently [lodge] itself in your hippocampus". Jody Rosen in a review for Rolling Stone selected the song as an example of Swift's songwriting that highlighted her "peculiar charm" on Fearless: "Her music mixes an almost impersonal professionalism—it's so rigorously crafted it sounds like it has been scientifically engineered in a hit factory—with confessions that are squirmingly intimate and true." In Slant Magazine, Jonathan Keefe picked "Hey Stephen" as one of the album's most charming cuts and praised the emotional sentiments that resonated with Swift's main audience of teenagers, but he felt it lacked the sophistication that others credited her with.
In retrospective reviews of the song, Sheffield and Nate Jones from Vulture complimented its catchy melody. Jones wrote: "Swift is in the zone as a writer, performer, and producer on this winning deep cut." Jon Bream of the Star Tribune described "Hey Stephen" as "perfect high school pop" and picked it as a highlight on Fearless. Reviewing the re-recorded "Hey Stephen (Taylor's Version)", Exclaim!'s Heather Taylor-Singh said it retained the original's earnest emotion and The Line of Best Fits Ross Horton wrote it remained "superb" as it was before. Some others were not as complimentary. Hazel Cills of Pitchfork said the track's "extreme specificity", which felt like "a copy of Swift’s yearbook we're somehow privy to", was too much for an already personal album. Mary Siroky in Consequence called "Hey Stephen" a catchy song but wrote its "repetitive melody" and "cliched" lyrical motifs make it the album's least compelling. For Perone, although the lyrics are conventional and generic, "Swift's performance and her melodic writing make the song enjoyable and engaging anyway".
## Personnel
"Hey Stephen" (2008)
- Taylor Swift – writer, producer
- Nathan Chapman – producer
- Drew Bollman – assistant mixer
- Chad Carlson – recording engineer
- Justin Niebank – mixer
- Andrew Bowers – finger snaps
- Burrus Cox – finger snaps
- Carolyn Cooper – finger snaps
- Lauren Elcan – finger snaps
- Delaney McBride – finger snaps
- Emma McBride – finger snaps
- Nicholas Brown – instruments
"Hey Stephen (Taylor's Version)" (2021)'
- Taylor Swift – writer, producer, lead vocals
- Christopher Rowe – vocal recording, producer
- Max Bernstein – vibraphone
- Matt Billingslea – drums, finger snaps
- Caitlin Evanson – background vocals
- Derek Garten – additional engineer
- Serban Ghenea – mixing
- John Hanes – engineer
- Amos Heller – bass guitar
- Mike Meadows – acoustic guitar, Hammond B3, finger snaps, background vocals
- David Payne – recording
- Lowell Reynolds – assistant recording engineer
- Jonathan Yudkin – fiddle, fiddle recording
## Charts
### "Hey Stephen"
### "Hey Stephen (Taylor's Version)"
## Certification
|
24,629,846 |
Telopea oreades
| 1,153,541,258 |
Large shrub or small tree in the family Proteaceae native to southeastern Australia
|
[
"Flora of New South Wales",
"Flora of Victoria (state)",
"Plants described in 1861",
"Proteales of Australia",
"Taxa named by Ferdinand von Mueller",
"Telopea (plant)"
] |
Telopea oreades, commonly known as the Gippsland-, mountain- or Victorian waratah, is a large shrub or small tree in the family Proteaceae. Native to southeastern Australia, it is found in wet sclerophyll forest and rainforest on rich acidic soils high in organic matter. No subspecies are recognised, though a northern isolated population hybridises extensively with the Braidwood waratah (T. mongaensis). Reaching a height of up to 19 metres (62 feet), T. oreades grows with a single trunk and erect habit. It has dark green leaves with prominent veins that are 11–28 centimetres (4.3–11 in) long and 1.5–6 cm (0.6–2.4 in) wide. The red flower heads, known as inflorescences, appear in late spring. Each is composed of up to 60 individual flowers.
In the garden, T. oreades grows in soils with good drainage and ample moisture in part-shaded or sunny positions. Several commercially available cultivars that are hybrid forms with T. speciosissima have been developed, such as the 'Shady Lady' series. The timber is hard and has been used for making furniture and tool handles.
## Description
Telopea oreades grows as a large shrub or narrow tree 9–19 m (30–62 ft) high with a trunk reaching 45 to 60 cm (18 to 24 in) in diameter. Greyish brown, the trunk is thin in relation to the tree's height and not buttressed. Its surface is smooth with horizontal lenticels and warty protuberances. Smaller branches are more brown and smooth. Young plants have a much more erect habit than other members of the genus Telopea and their stems have a distinct reddish tinge. The shiny dark green leaves are arranged alternately along the stems. The leaves are narrow-obovate to spathulate, and measure 11–28 centimetres (4.3–11 in) long and 1.5–6 cm (0.59–2.36 in) wide. They have a sunken midrib on the upperside (and corresponding ridge on the underside) with four to six pairs of lateral veins visible at a 45 degree angle to the midline. They veer and converge to form an easily seen vein that runs around 0.5 cm (0.20 in) inside the leaf margin. The undersurface is paler and greyer. When dried, the leaves appear to have a granular texture.
Flowering occurs between October and December in its native range, with plants at higher elevations flowering later than ones at lower altitude. The crimson flowerheads are about 9 cm (3.5 in) in diameter. They are composed of 36 to 60 individual flowers with green to pink bracts, which may be up to 3 cm (1.2 in) long. Each flower is encased in a 2.5 cm (0.98 in) long perianth, which is a much brighter red on the surface facing the centre of the flower than the surface facing outwards. Anthesis, or the opening of the flowers, begins with those at the centre of the flowerhead and moves to the edges or base. The individual flower bears a sessile anther (that is, it lacks a filament), which lies next to the stigma at the end of the style. The ovary lies at the base of the style and atop a stalk known as the gynophore, and it is from here that the seed pods then develop. Meanwhile, a crescent-shaped nectary lies at the base of the gynophore.
After flowering, the curved leathery to woody follicles develop; these are 5 to 7.5 cm (2.0 to 3.0 in) long, which somewhat resemble a boat in shape. These ripen the following May to September, and split open to reveal (and spill) 10–16 seeds. Arranged in two columns, the winged, flat brown seeds are around 1 cm (0.39 in) long with a roughly rectangular wing 3.5–4 cm (1.4–1.6 in) long. New shoots often grow through flowerheads.
It can be difficult to distinguish T. oreades from T. mongaensis though the leaves of the latter species are more prominently veined, and mostly (but not always) narrower than 2 cm (0.79 in) wide. Telopea oreades flowers around a month earlier than T. mongaensis in areas where both are present.
## Taxonomy
The Gippsland waratah was first formally described by the Victorian Government Botanist Ferdinand von Mueller in 1861 in Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae. The type material was collected in rugged mountainous country around Nungatta Creek, a tributary of the Genoa River in south-eastern New South Wales. Mueller had been surveying the mountainous eastern part of the state since the 1850s. The species name is said to be derived from the Ancient Greek oreos "mountain" and hence means "of or relating to a mountain". The proper word for "mountain" in Ancient Greek is however oros (ὄρος). The only alternative scientific name proposed was in 1891, when Otto Kuntze named it as Hylogyne oreades, but it was rejected as an illegitimate name. Common names applies to the species include Gippsland-, Victorian-, mountain-, and tree waratah.
Telopea oreades is one of five species from southeastern Australia that make up the genus Telopea. No subspecies are recognised. It has been difficult to distinguish from the similar T. mongaensis, but microscopic analysis has revealed that T. oreades has features termed sclereids while T. mongaensis does not. The two are sister species, and their next closest relative is the Tasmanian waratah (T. truncata).
A disjunct northern population of T. oreades grows together with T. mongaensis in the southern Monga Valley in southern New South Wales, with some hybrids reported. Crisp and Weston concluded that the two species for the most part did not hybridise there. However, a genetic study using microsatellites found there was extensive hybridisation, with much of the presumed pure T. oreades showing a close relation to T. mongaensis. The populations of waratahs are thought to have grown and shrunk with the ebb and flow of ice ages in the Pleistocene, finally stranding a population of T. oreades located alongside T. mongaensis as conditions suitable for waratahs changed in southeastern Australia.
The genus lies in the subtribe Embothriinae, along with the tree waratahs (Alloxylon) from eastern Australia and New Caledonia, and Oreocallis and Chilean firetree (Embothrium coccineum) from South America. Almost all these species have red terminal flowers, and hence the subtribe's origin and floral appearance must predate the splitting of Gondwana into Australia, Antarctica, and South America over 60 million years ago.
## Distribution and habitat
Telopea oreades occurs in moist forests and temperate rainforests of coastal ranges and tableland escarpments in two disjunct areas of southeastern Australia. The first is centred on East Gippsland in Victoria, from Orbost to the vicinity of Eden across the border in far southeastern New South Wales. There is a more northerly population around the Monga Valley near Braidwood, New South Wales extending to Moss Vale. There are unconfirmed reports of the species in the vicinity of Brown Mountain and Glenbog State Forest in southern New South Wales, which lie between the two areas. Plants in Victoria are found at altitudes ranging from 200 metres (660 ft) in Lind National Park to 1,300 metres (4,300 ft) on Mount Ellery. Wetter eastern and southern slopes are favoured habitats, and the annual rainfall ranges from 1,000 to 2,000 mm (39 to 79 in).
T. oreades grows in acidic soil that is high in nutrients and organic matter. Associated tree species in Victoria include shining gum (Eucalyptus nitens), messmate (E. obliqua), mountain grey gum (E. cypellocarpa), cut-tail (E. fastigata), silvertop ash (E. sieberi), southern sassafras (Atherosperma moschatum), black oliveberry (Elaeocarpus holopetalus), blanket leaf (Bedfordia arborescens), Australian blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon), privet mock‐olive (Notelaea ligustrina), banyalla (Pittosporum bicolor), Errinundra plum pine (Podocarpus sp. Goonmirk Rocks), Errinundra pepper (Tasmannia xerophila subsp. robusta) and soft tree fern (Dicksonia antarctica).
### Conservation
Telopea oreades is not listed under Commonwealth environmental legislation and is not considered by respective state authorities to be rare or threatened in Victoria or New South Wales. The species does occur in the threatened Cool Temperate Rainforest Community in Victoria that is protected under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act, and it is a component of the threatened Southern Escarpment Wet Sclerophyll Forests of far southern New South Wales. Furthermore, planted specimens are frequently stolen from bush regeneration sites as they are desirable garden plants. Conversely in New Zealand, there is a report of T. oreades escaping into kanuka scrub from the trout hatchery gardens on the Tongariro River south of Lake Taupo.
## Ecology
The prominent position and striking colour of Telopea oreades and many of its relatives within the subtribe Embothriinae—both in Australia and South America—strongly suggest it is adapted to pollination by birds, and has been for over 60 million years. Birds recorded visiting the flowers for their nectar include red wattlebird (Anthochaera carunculata), eastern spinebill (Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris), crescent honeyeater (Phylidonyris pyrrhopterus), yellow-faced honeyeater (Lichenostomus chrysops), brown-headed honeyeater (Melithreptus brevirostris), white-naped honeyeater (Melithreptus lunatus) and silvereye (Zosterops lateralis).
T. oreades has a central taproot and few lateral roots. Like most Proteaceae, it has fine proteoid roots that arise from larger roots. These are roots with dense clusters of short lateral rootlets that form a mat in the soil just below the leaf litter. They are particularly efficient at absorbing nutrients from nutrient-poor soils, including the phosphorus-deficient native soils of Australia.
T. oreades has a swollen woody base largely under the soil known as a lignotuber, which stores energy and nutrients as a resource for rapid growth after a bushfire. The wet forests in which it grows seldom catch fire. When they do, the plant community becomes a more open sclerophyll woodland until slow-growing plants with larger leaves take over. New shoots grow from the lignotuber, which survives bushfire as the rest of the plant above ground is burnt. The seed also germinates and grows in post-bushfire soil, which is higher in nutrients and more open with fewer competing plant species. Waratah seeds are often eaten—and destroyed—by animals and do not travel far (several metres) from the parent plants.
## Cultivation and uses
Telopea oreades needs a well-drained location as well as reliable moisture to thrive. Soil with some clay content is beneficial. It is more shade-tolerant than the more popular New South Wales waratah, preferring part-shade but tolerating sunny aspects. It tolerates moderate frosts. Plants can be hard-pruned—lopping old stems and branches can rejuvenate mature plants. Plants can benefit from low-phosphorus fertilizer applied in spring and autumn. Propagation is by seed, the germination rates of which fall significantly after several months' storage unless refrigerated, or by cuttings of new growth that has just hardened. Cultivars must be propagated by cutting to make daughter plants identical to the parent.
T. oreades has been grown successfully in England. The plant was first cultivated there by Canon Arthur Townsend Boscawen at Ludgvan in Cornwall from seed that he obtained in 1910. He had succeeded in bringing the plant into flower by 1915, providing material for illustration in Curtis's Botanical Magazine in 1916. A plant in Cornwall reached 4.6 metres (15 ft) in height, while another at Wakehurst Place reached 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) in the late 1980s. Although thriving at Wakehurst, the species can be very sensitive to English soils. The Royal Horticultural Society awarded the species an Award of Merit in 1916.
A selected white-flowered form from the Errinundra Plateau, which was originally known as 'Plateau View Alba' or 'Plateau View White', was registered by the Australian Cultivar Registration Authority in 1990 as 'Errindundra White'. Plantsmen have also developed several hybrids with T. speciosissima, looking to combine the hardiness of T. oreades with the showier flowerheads of the latter. Red-, pink- and even white-flowered cultivars are available.
- Telopea 'Champagne' is a cultivar registered under plant breeders' rights (PBR) in 2006. Its creamy yellow flowerheads appear from October to December. It is a three-way hybrid between T. speciosissima, T. oreades and the yellow-flowered form of T. truncata.
- Telopea 'Golden Globe' is a cultivar registered under PBR in 2005. Larger than 'Champagne', it is also a three-way hybrid between T. speciosissima, T. oreades and the yellow-flowered form of T. truncata. It has been propagated and sold as 'Shady Lady Yellow'. It was originally bred in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne.
- Telopea 'Shady Lady Red' is a larger shrub that may reach 5 m (16 ft) high and 2 or 3 m (6.6 or 9.8 ft) wide. A hybrid of T. speciosissima and T. oreades, it arose by chance in a Melbourne garden. The first of the 'Shady Lady' series of cultivars, it became commercially available in the mid-1980s. The flowerheads are smaller and lack the bracts of the speciosissima parent. As its name suggests, it tolerates more shade. It is vigorous and more reliable in temperate and subtropical areas, and grows in semi-shade or sun.
- Telopea 'Shady Lady White' is a white-flowered hybrid between T. speciosissima and T. oreades.
- Telopea 'Shady Lady Pink' is the result of a cross between 'Shady Lady Red' and 'Shady Lady White'.
- Telopea 'Shady Lady Crimson' is a selected colour form developed from 'Shady Lady Red'. It became commercially available in Australia in 2010.
The timber is fairly hard and resembles silky oak (Grevillea robusta). It is durable and can be readily polished and worked with, making it amenable for use in furniture, picture frames and tool handles.
|
60,471,817 |
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London
| 1,171,900,049 |
Decorated ceilings
|
[
"Alfred Waterhouse buildings",
"Natural History Museum, London",
"Painted ceilings"
] |
A pair of decorated ceilings in the main Central Hall (officially Hintze Hall since 2014) and smaller North Hall of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, were unveiled at the building's opening in 1881. They were designed by the museum's architect Alfred Waterhouse and painted by the artist Charles James Lea. The ceiling of the Central Hall consists of 162 panels, 108 of which depict plants considered significant to the history of the museum, to the British Empire or the museum's visitors and the remainder are highly stylised decorative botanical paintings. The ceiling of the smaller North Hall consists of 36 panels, 18 of which depict plants growing in the British Isles. Painted directly onto the plaster of the ceilings, they also make use of gilding for visual effect.
The natural history collections had originally shared a building with their parent institution the British Museum, but with the expansion of the British Empire there was a significant increase in both public and commercial interest in natural history, and in the number of specimens added to the museum's natural history collections. In 1860 it was agreed that a separate museum of natural history would be created in a large building, capable of displaying the largest specimens, such as whales. The superintendent of the natural history departments, Richard Owen, envisaged that visitors would enter a large central hall containing what he termed an "index collection" of representative exhibits, from which other galleries would radiate, and a smaller hall to the north would display the natural history of the British Isles. Waterhouse's Romanesque design for the museum included decorative painted ceilings. Acton Smee Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works, refused to permit the decoration of the ceilings on grounds of cost, but Waterhouse convinced him that provided the painting took place while the scaffolding from the museum's construction was still in place it would incur no extra cost; he further managed to convince Ayrton that the ceiling would be more appealing if elements of the paintings were gilded.
The ceiling of the Central Hall consists of six rows of painted panels, three on each side of the roof's apex. Above the landing at the southern end of the building, the ceiling is divided into nine-panel blocks. The uppermost three panels in each block consist of what Waterhouse termed "archaic" panels, depicting stylised plants on a green background. Each of the lower six panels in each block depicts a plant considered of particular significance to the British Empire, against a pale background. Above the remainder of the Central Hall the archaic panels remain in the same style, but each set of six lower panels depicts a single plant, spreading across the six panels and against the same pale background; these represent plants considered of particular significance either to visitors, or to the history of the museum. The ceiling of the smaller North Hall comprises just four rows of panels. The two uppermost rows are of a simple design of heraldic symbols of the then constituent countries of the United Kingdom; each panel in the lower two rows depicts a different plant found in Britain or Ireland, in keeping with the room's intended purpose as a display of British natural history.
As the ceilings were built cheaply, they are extremely fragile and require regular repair. They underwent significant conservation work in 1924, 1975 and 2016. The restoration in 2016 coincided with the removal of "Dippy", a cast of a Diplodocus skeleton which had previously stood in the Central Hall, and the installation of the skeleton of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling.
## Background
Irish physician Hans Sloane was born in 1660, and since childhood had a fascination with natural history. In 1687 Sloane was appointed personal doctor to Christopher Monck, the newly appointed Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, and lived on that island until Monck died in October 1688. During his free time in Jamaica Sloane indulged his passion for biology and botany, and on his return to London brought with him a collection of plants, animal and mineral specimens and numerous drawings and notes regarding the local wildlife, which eventually became the basis for his major work A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica (1707–1725). He became one of England's leading doctors, credited with the invention of chocolate milk and with the popularisation of quinine as a medicine, and in 1727 King George II appointed him Physician in Ordinary (doctor to the Royal Household).
Building on the collection he had brought from Jamaica, Sloane continued to collect throughout his life, using his new-found wealth to buy items from other collectors and to buy out the collections of existing museums. During Sloane's life there were few public museums in England, and by 1710 Sloane's collection filled 11 large rooms, which he allowed the public to visit. Following his death on 11 January 1753, Sloane stipulated that his collection—by this time filling two large houses—was to be kept together for the public benefit if at all possible. The collection was initially offered to King George II, who was reluctant to meet the £20,000 (about £ in 2023 terms) purchase cost stipulated in Sloane's will. Parliament ultimately agreed to establish a national lottery to fund the purchase of Sloane's collection and the Harleian Library which was also currently for sale, and to unite them with the Cotton library, which had been bequeathed to the nation in 1702, to create a national collection. On 7 June 1753 the British Museum Act 1753 was passed, authorising the unification of the three collections as the British Museum and establishing the national lottery to fund the purchase of the collections and to provide funds for their maintenance.
The trustees settled on Montagu House in Bloomsbury as a home for the new British Museum, opening it to the public for the first time on 15 January 1759. With the British Museum now established numerous other collectors began to donate and bequeath items to the museum's collections, which were further swelled by large quantities of exhibits brought to England in 1771 by the first voyage of James Cook, by a large collection of Egyptian antiquities (including the Rosetta Stone) ceded by the French in the Capitulation of Alexandria, by the 1816 purchase of the Elgin Marbles by the British government who in turn passed them to the museum, and by the 1820 bequest of the vast botanical collections of Joseph Banks. Other collectors continued to sell, donate or bequeath their collections to the museum, and by 1807 it was clear that Montagu House was unable to accommodate the museum's holdings. In 1808–09, in an effort to save space, the newly appointed keeper of the natural history department George Shaw felt obliged to destroy large numbers of the museum's specimens in a series of bonfires in the museum's gardens. The 1821 bequest of the library of 60,000 books assembled by George III forced the trustees to address the issue, as the bequest was on condition that the collection be displayed in a single room, and Montagu House had no such room available. In 1823 Robert Smirke was hired to design a replacement building, the first parts of which opened in 1827 and which was completed in the 1840s.
### Plans for a Natural History building
With more space for displays and able to accommodate large numbers of visitors, the new British Museum proved a success with the public, and the natural history department proved particularly popular. Although the museum's management had traditionally been dominated by classicists and antiquarians, in 1856 the natural history department was split into separate departments of botany, zoology, mineralogy and geology, each with their own keeper and with botanist and palaeontologist Richard Owen as superintendent of the four departments. By this time the expansion of the British Empire had led to an increased appreciation of the importance of natural history on the part of the authorities, as territorial expansion had given British companies access to unfamiliar species, the commercial possibilities of which needed to be investigated.
By the time of Owen's appointment, the collections of the natural history departments had increased tenfold in size in the preceding 20 years, and the museum was again suffering from a chronic lack of space. There had also long been criticism that because of the varied nature of its displays the museum was confusing and lacked coherence; as early as 1824 Sir Robert Peel, the Home Secretary, had commented that "what with marbles, statues, butterflies, manuscripts, books and pictures, I think the museum is a farrago that distracts attention". Owen proposed that the museum be split into separate buildings, with one building to house the works of Man (art, antiquities, books and manuscripts) and one to house the works of God (the natural history departments); he argued that the expansion of the British Empire had led to an increased ability to procure specimens, and that increased space to store and display these specimens would both aid scholarship, and enhance Britain's prestige.
> The great instrument of zoological science, as Lord Bacon points out, is a Museum of Natural History. Every civilized state in Europe possesses such a Museum. That of England has been progressively developed to the extent which the restrictive circumstances under which it originated have allowed. The public is now fully aware, by the reports that have been published by Parliament, by representations to Government, and by articles in Reviews and other Periodicals, of the present condition of the National Museum of Natural History and of its most pressing requirements. Of them the most pressing, and the one essential to rendering the collections worthy of this great empire, is 'space'. Our colonies include parts of the earth where the forms of plants and animals are the most strange. No empire in the world had ever so wide a range for the collection of the various forms of animal life as Great Britain. Never was there so much energy and intelligence displayed in the capture and transmission of exotic animals by the enterprising traveller in unknown lands and by the hardy settler in remote colonies, as by those who start from their native shores of Britain. Foreign Naturalists consequently visit England anticipating to find in her capital and in her National Museum the richest and most varied materials for their comparisons and deductions. And they ought to be in a state pre-eminently conducive to the advancement of a philosophical zoology, and on a scale commensurate with the greatness of the nation and the peculiar national facilities for such perfection. But, in order to receive and to display zoological specimens, space must be had, and not merely space for display, but for orderly display: the galleries should bear relation in size and form with the nature of the classes respectively occupying them. They should be such as to enable the student or intelligent visitor to discern the extent of the class, and to trace the kind and order of the variations which have been superinduced upon its common or fundamental characters.
In 1858 a group of 120 leading scientists wrote to Benjamin Disraeli, at the time the Chancellor of the Exchequer, complaining about the inadequacy of the existing building for displaying and storing the natural history collections. In January 1860, the trustees of the museum approved Owen's proposal. (Only nine of the British Museum's fifty trustees supported Owen's scheme, but 33 trustees failed to turn up to the meeting. As a consequence, Owen's plan passed by nine votes to eight.) Owen envisaged a huge new building of 500,000 square feet (46,000 m<sup>2</sup>) for the natural history collections, capable of exhibiting the largest specimens. Owen felt that exhibiting large animals would attract visitors to the new museum; in particular, he hoped to collect and display whole specimens of large whales while he still had the opportunity, as he felt that the larger species of whale were on the verge of extinction. (It was reported that when the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction asked Owen how much space would be needed, he replied "I shall want space for seventy whales, to begin with".) In October 1861 Owen gave William Ewart Gladstone, the newly appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, a tour of the cramped natural history departments of the British Museum, to demonstrate how overcrowded and poorly lit the museum's galleries and storerooms were, and to impress on him the need for a much larger building.
After much debate over a potential site, in 1864 the site formerly occupied by the 1862 International Exhibition in South Kensington was chosen. Francis Fowke, who had designed the buildings for the International Exhibition, was commissioned to build Owen's museum. In December 1865 Fowke died, and the Office of Works commissioned little-known architect Alfred Waterhouse, who had never previously worked on a building of this scale, to complete Fowke's design. Dissatisfied with Fowke's scheme, in 1868 Waterhouse submitted his own revised design, which was endorsed by the trustees.
Owen, who considered animals more important than plants, was unhappy with the museum containing botanical specimens at all, and during the negotiations that led to the new building supported transferring the botanical collections to the new Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew to amalgamate the national collections of living and preserved plants. However, he decided that it would diminish the significance of his new museum were it not to cover the whole of nature, and when the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction was convened in 1870 to review the national policy on scientific education Owen successfully lobbied for the museum to retain its botanical collections. In 1873 construction finally began on the new museum building.
## Waterhouse's building
Waterhouse's design was a Romanesque scheme, loosely based on German religious architecture; Owen was a leading creationist, and felt that the museum served a religious purpose in displaying the works of God. The design was centred around a very large rectangular central hall and a smaller hall to the north. Visitors would enter from the street into the Central Hall, which would hold what Owen termed an "index collection" of typical specimens, intended to serve as an introduction to the museum's collections for those unfamiliar with natural history. Extended galleries were to radiate to the east and west from this central hall to form the south face of the museum, with further galleries to the east, west and north to be added when funds allowed to complete a rectangular shape.
Uniquely for the time, Waterhouse's building was faced inside and out with terracotta, the first building in England to be so designed; although expensive to build, this was resistant to the acid rain of heavily polluted London, allowed the building to be washed clean, and also allowed it to be decorated with intricate mouldings and sculptures. A smaller North Hall, immediately north of the Central Hall, would be used for exhibits specifically relating to British natural history. On 18 April 1881 the new British Museum (Natural History) opened to the public. As relocating exhibits from Bloomsbury was a difficult and time-consuming process, much of the building remained empty at the time the museum opened.
## Central Hall
As well as being large, the Central Hall was to be very high, rising the full 72-foot (22 m) height of the building to a plaster-lined mansard roof, with skylights running the length of the hall at the junction between the roof and the wall. A grand staircase at the northern end of the hall, flanked by archways leading to the smaller North Hall, led to balconies running almost the full length of the hall to a staircase which in turn led to a large landing above the main entrance, such that a visitor entering the hall would walk the full length of the floor of the hall to reach the first staircase, and then the full length of the balcony to reach the second. As a consequence, it posed a difficulty to Waterhouse's plans to decorate the building. As the skylights were lower than the ceiling the roof was in relative darkness compared to the rest of the room, and owing to the routes to be taken by visitors, the design needed to be attractive when viewed both from the floor below, and from the raised balconies to the each side. To address this, Waterhouse decided to decorate the 170-foot (52 m) ceiling with painted botanical panels.
> The lower panels will have representations of foliage treated conventionally. The upper panels will be treated with more variety of colour and the designs will be of an archaic character. The chief idea to be represented is that of growth. The colours will be arranged so that the most brilliant will be near the apex of the roof.
Acton Smee Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works, was hostile to the museum project, and sought to cut costs wherever possible; he disliked art, and felt that it was his responsibility to restrain the excesses of artists and architects. Having already insisted that Waterhouse's original design for wooden ceilings and a lead roof be replaced with cheaper plaster and slate, Ayrton vetoed Waterhouse's plan to decorate the ceiling. Waterhouse eventually persuaded Ayrton that provided the ceiling were decorated while the scaffolding from its construction remained in place, a decorated ceiling would be no more expensive than a plain white one. He prepared two sample paintings of the pomegranate and magnolia for Ayrton, who approved £1435 (about £ in 2023 terms) to decorate the ceiling. Having obtained approval for the paintings, Waterhouse managed to convince Ayrton that the paintings' appeal would be enhanced if certain elements were gilded.
Records do not survive of how the plants to be represented were chosen and who created the initial designs. Knapp & Press (2005) believe that it was almost certainly Waterhouse himself, likely working from specimens in the museum's botanical collections, while William T. Stearn, writing in 1980, believes that the illustrations were chosen by botanist William Carruthers, who at the time was the museum's Keeper of Botany. To create the painted panels from the initial cartoons, Waterhouse commissioned Manchester artist Charles James Lea of Best & Lea, with whom he had already worked on Pilmore Hall in Hurworth-on-Tees. Waterhouse provided Lea with a selection of botanical drawings, and requested that Lea "select and prepare drawings of fruits and flowers most suitable and gild same in the upper panels of the roof"; it is not recorded who drew the cartoons for the paintings, or how the species were chosen. Best & Lea agreed a fee of £1975 (about £ in 2023 terms) for the work. How the panels were painted is not recorded, but it is likely Lea painted directly onto the ceiling from the scaffolding.
### Main ceiling
Waterhouse and Lea's design for the ceiling is based on a theme of growth and power. From the skylights on each side, three rows of panels run the length of the main hall, with the third, uppermost rows on each side meeting at the apex of the roof. The two lower rows are divided into blocks of six panels apiece, each block depicting a different plant species. Plants spread their branches upwards towards the apex, representing the theme of growth. The supporting girders of the ceiling are spaced at every third column of panels, dividing the panels into square blocks of nine; the girders are an integral part of the design, designed to be barely visible from the ground but highly visible from the upper galleries, representing industry working with nature.
The girders themselves are based on 12th-century German architecture. Each comprises a round arch, braced with repeating triangles to create a zig-zag pattern. Within each upward-facing triangle is a highly stylised gilded leaf; the six different leaf designs repeat across the length of the hall. Running perpendicular to the girders—i.e., along the length of the hall—are seven iron support beams. The topmost of these forms the apex of the roof, and the next beam down on each side, separating the topmost from the middle row of panels, is painted with a geometric design of cream and green rectangles. The next beam down on each side, separating the middle from the lowest row of panels, is decorated in the same shades of cream and green, but this time with a design of green triangles pointing upwards. The lowest of the beams, separating the panels from the skylights, is painted deep burgundy and is labelled with the scientific name of the plant depicted in the panels above; the names are flanked with a motif of gilt dots and highly stylised roses. At Owen's request, the plants were labelled with their binomial names rather than their English names, as he felt this would serve an educational purpose to visitors.
Other than on the outermost edges of the panels at the two ends of the hall, each set of nine panels is flanked alongside the girders by an almost abstract design of leaves; these decorations continue along the space between the skylights and the girders to reach the terracotta walls below, providing a visible connection between the walls and the ceiling designs.
Between the main entrance and the landing of the main staircase, the lower two rows of panels all have a pale cream background, intended to draw the viewer's attention to the plant being illustrated; each plant chosen was considered significant either to visitors, or to the museum itself. Each block of three columns depicts a different species, but all have a broadly similar design. The central column in the lowest row depicts the trunk or stalk of the plant in question, while the panels on either side and the three panels of the row above depict the branches of the plant spreading from the lower central panel. The design was intended to draw the viewer's eye upwards, and to give the impression that the plants are growing.
#### Archaic panels
Above the six-panel sets and adjacent to the apex of the roof lie the top rows of panels. These panels, called the "archaic" panels by Waterhouse, are of a radically different design to those below. Each panel is surrounded by gilded strips and set against a dark green background, rather than the pale cream of the six-panel sets; the archaic panels also continue beyond the six panel sets and over the landing of the main staircase, to run the full length of the Central Hall.
The archaic panels depict flattened, stylised plants in pale colours with gilt highlighting, sometimes accompanied by birds, butterflies and insects. Unlike the six-panel sets the archaic panels are not labelled, and while some plants on the archaic panels are recognisable others are stylised beyond recognition.
No records survive of how Waterhouse and Lea selected the designs for the archaic panels, or on from which images they were derived. Owing to the flattened nature of the designs, it is possible that they were based on pressed flowers in the museum's herbarium, or on illustrations in the British Museum's collection of books on botany. Some of the archaic panels appear to be simplified versions of the illustrations in Nathaniel Wallich's book Plantae Asiaticae Rariores.
### Balconies
The ceiling of the balconies flanking the Central Hall are also decorated, albeit to a far more simple design. The ceilings are painted with a stencilled motif of square panels, each containing a small illustration of a different plant or animal. All the birds and insects from the archaic panels are included; the panels also feature cacti, cockatoos, crabs, daisies, fish, hawks, lizards, octopuses, pinecones, pomegranates, snails and snakes. The ceilings of the lobbies at the northern end of each balcony—originally the entrances to the museum's refreshment room—are each decorated with a single large panel of stencilled birds, insects, butterflies and paterae.
### South landing
Unlike the cavernous, intentionally cathedral-like feel of the main space of the Central Hall, the ceiling of the landing above the main entrance, connecting the balconies to the upper level, has a different design. Instead of the exposed and decorated iron girders of the main space, the structural girders of this end of the building are faced in the same terracotta style as the building's walls. As the structure of the landing and staircases meant that the ceiling at this end of the room was not clearly visible from the ground floor, there was less of a need to make the designs appear attractive from far below; instead, the design of this stretch of the ceiling was intended to be viewed from a relatively close distance.
As with the rest of the Hall, the ceiling is still divided into blocks of nine panels. The archaic panels still run the full length, providing a thematic and visual connection with the rest of the ceiling. The six lower panels of each set do not depict a single plant spreading across each set of panels; instead, each of the 36 panels in the lower two rows depicts a different plant. These each represent a plant considered of particular significance to the British Empire.
## North Hall
Archways flanking the northern staircase to the balcony level lead to the North Hall, intended by Owen for a display of the natural history of the United Kingdom. Waterhouse designed a ceiling for the North Hall representing this theme. As with the Central Hall, this ceiling comprises rows of panels above a long skylight along each side of the room; there are two rows per side rather than three, and nine panels on each row. Unlike the archaic panels in the top row of the Central Hall, the upper rows on each side consist of plain green panels, each containing a heraldic rose, thistle or shamrock in representation of England, Scotland and Ireland, the three nations then constituting the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. (Wales was not represented, as in this period it was considered a part of England.)
In keeping with Owen's intent that the room be used for a display on the topic of the British Isles, the nine lower panels on each side each illustrate a different plant found in Britain or Ireland. The plants depicted were chosen to illustrate the variety of plant habitats in the British Isles. Uniquely in the building, the ceiling panels of the North Hall make use of silver leaf as well as gilt. (During conservation work in 2016 it was found that initially some panels in the Central Hall had also made use of silver leaf, but the silver sections had subsequently been overpainted with ochre.) The style of illustration is similar to that of those over the south landing, but instead of the pale backgrounds of the main ceiling and the panels above the landing, the illustrations in the North Hall are set against a dark green background; Waterhouse's intent was that the darker colour scheme would create an intimate feel by making the ceiling appear lower.
One of the last parts of the initial museum to be completed, the display of British natural history in the North Hall was somewhat arbitrary, and did not reflect Owen's original intentions. Stuffed native animals such as birds and rats were exhibited, alongside prize-winning racehorses, common domesticated animals such as cows and ducks, and an exhibit on commonly grown crops and garden vegetables and on the control of insects. The display was unsuccessful, and was later removed, with the North Hall used as a space for temporary exhibitions before eventually becoming the museum's cafeteria.
## After completion
> The walls and the ceilings are decorated, as befits a Palace of Nature, with all the varieties of animal and vegetable life, and the more striking fossil remains ... Not the least admirable part of the plan is the great central hall, to be furnished and ornamented as an index to the contents of the museum. Though its proportions are magnificent, it will only be an epitome of the whole collection. The idea seems to have been suggested by the Reference Library of 60,000 volumes in the Reading Room of the British Museum, which this hall will almost equal in size, though of a very different form. We are sure that Londoners will be very glad to hear that they have now the opportunity of pursuing the most delightful of all studies in a true Temple of Nature, showing, as it should, the Beauty of Holiness.
Although the terracotta decorations of the museum do contain some botanical motifs, most of the decor of the building with the exception of the ceiling depicts animals, with extinct species depicted on the east wing and extant species on the west. A statue of Adam originally stood between the two wings over the main entrance, celebrating humanity as the peak of creation, but was dislodged during the Second World War and not replaced. Much was written at the time of the museum's opening about the terracotta decorations of the museum, but very little was written about how the ceiling was received. Knapp & Press (2005) speculate that the apparent lack of public interest in the design of the ceiling could be owing to the prevalence of William Morris's ornate floral wallpaper and fabric designs rendering the decorations of the ceiling less unusual to Victorian audiences than might be expected.
### Deterioration, restoration and conservation
During the construction of the building Waterhouse had been under intense pressure from the trustees to cut costs, and consequently was forced to abandon his proposed wooden ceiling. Instead, beneath a slate roof, the ceilings were constructed of lath and plaster. The ribs that frame the panels were reinforced with animal hair, but the panels themselves were not reinforced. As a consequence, the ceiling panels are unusually susceptible to vibration and to expansion and contraction caused by temperature variations.
The elaborate nature of the building's design means that its roof slopes at multiple angles, with numerous gutters and gullies, all of which are easily blocked by leaves and wind-blown detritus. As such, during periods of heavy rainfall water often penetrates the slate roof and reaches the fragile plaster ceiling. In 1924 and 1975, the museum has been obliged to repair and restore the ceilings owing to water damage. The height of the Central Hall ceiling made this a complicated and expensive process, requiring floor-to-ceiling scaffolding across the length and width of the Central Hall. The need to avoid damage to the fragile mosaic flooring and the terracotta tiling on the walls caused further difficulty in erecting the scaffolding. The exact nature and the cost of the repairs conducted in 1924 and 1975 is unknown, as is the identity of the restorers, as the relevant records have been lost, although it is known that cracks in the ceiling were filled with plaster and the paintwork and gilding retouched; it is possible that some of the panels were replaced entirely.
During the Second World War, South Kensington was heavily bombed. The north, east, south and west of the building sustained direct bomb hits; the east wing in particular suffered severe damage and its upper floor was left a burned-out shell. The bombs missed the centre of the museum, leaving the fragile ceilings of the Central and North Halls undamaged.
Since the 1975 restoration the ceiling once more began to deteriorate, individual sections of plaster becoming unkeyed (detached from their underlying laths), paintwork peeling from some panels, and the delicate plasterwork cracking. The ends of the Central Hall suffered the worst deterioration, with some cracks above the landing and the northern end of the hall becoming large enough to be visible to the naked eye, while the gilding in the North Hall became gradually tarnished.
In 2001 a systematic programme for the conservation of the ceilings was instituted. A specialised hoist is regularly used to allow a surveyor to take high resolution photographs of each panel from a close distance, and the images of each panel used to create a time series for each panel. This permits staff to monitor the condition of each panel for deterioration.
In 2014, following a £5,000,000 donation from businessman Michael Hintze, Central Hall was formally renamed Hintze Hall. In 2016, in conjunction with works to replace the "Dippy" cast of a Diplodocus skeleton which had previously been the Central Hall's centrepiece with the skeleton of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling, further conservation work took place. The cracks in the plasterwork were filled, and flaked or peeling paintwork was repaired with Japanese tissue.
## Layout of the ceiling panels
### Central Hall panels
The panels are arranged in blocks of nine. The two central, uppermost rows (55–108) constitute the archaic panels. Of the outer two rows, in the six blocks at the southern end of the hall above the landing and the main entrance (1–18 and 109–126) each panel depicts a different plant considered of particular significance to the British Empire, while the twelve six-panel blocks above the main hall (19–54 and 127–162) each depict a single plant considered of particular importance to visitors or to the history of the museum, spreading across six panels.
### North Hall panels
There are two rows of nine panels apiece on each side of the apex. The central (highest) rows on each side consist of plain green panels, each containing a heraldic rose, thistle or shamrock in representation of England, Scotland and Ireland, the three nations then constituting the United Kingdom. The nine lower panels on each side each illustrate a different plant found in Britain or Ireland.
|
2,372,757 |
Sicilian Baroque
| 1,170,120,903 |
Baroque architectural style from Sicily
|
[
"Architectural styles",
"Baroque architecture in Italy",
"Baroque architecture in Sicily",
"Buildings and structures in Sicily",
"Early Modern Sicily",
"Italian Baroque",
"Sicilian Baroque"
] |
Sicilian Baroque is the distinctive form of Baroque architecture which evolved on the island of Sicily, off the southern coast of Italy, in the 17th and 18th centuries, when it was part of the Spanish Empire. The style is recognisable not only by its typical Baroque curves and flourishes, but also by distinctive grinning masks and putti and a particular flamboyance that has given Sicily a unique architectural identity.
The Sicilian Baroque style came to fruition during a major surge of rebuilding following the massive earthquake in 1693. Previously, the Baroque style had been used on the island in a naïve and parochial manner, having evolved from hybrid native architecture rather than being derived from the great Baroque architects of Rome. After the earthquake, local architects, many of them trained in Rome, were given plentiful opportunities to recreate the more sophisticated Baroque architecture that had become popular in mainland Italy; the work of these local architects – and the new genre of architectural engravings that they pioneered – inspired more local architects to follow their lead. Around 1730, Sicilian architects had developed a confidence in their use of the Baroque style. Their particular interpretation led to further evolution to a personalised and highly localised art form on the island. From the 1780s onwards, the style was gradually replaced by the newly fashionable neoclassicism.
The highly decorative Sicilian Baroque period lasted barely fifty years, and perfectly reflected the social order of the island at a time when, nominally ruled by Spain, it was in fact governed by a wealthy and often extravagant aristocracy into whose hands ownership of the primarily agricultural economy was highly concentrated. Its Baroque architecture gives the island an architectural character that has lasted into the 21st century.
## Characteristics
Baroque architecture is a European phenomenon originating in 17th-century Italy; it is flamboyant and theatrical, and richly ornamented by architectural sculpture and an effect known as chiaroscuro, the strategic use of light and shade on a building created by mass and shadow.
The Baroque style in Sicily was largely confined to buildings erected by the church, and palazzi, the private residences for the Sicilian aristocracy. The earliest examples of this style in Sicily lacked individuality and were typically heavy-handed pastiches of buildings seen by Sicilian visitors to Rome, Florence, and Naples. However, even at this early stage, provincial architects had begun to incorporate certain vernacular features of Sicily's older architecture. By the middle of the 18th century, when Sicily's Baroque architecture was noticeably different from that of the mainland, it typically included at least two or three of the following features, coupled with a unique freedom of design that is more difficult to characterise in words:
1. Grotesque masks and putti, often supporting balconies or decorating various bands of the entablature of a building; these grinning or glaring faces are a relic of Sicilian architecture from before the mid-17th century (Illustrations 2 and 9).
2. Balconies, often complemented by intricate wrought iron balustrades after 1633 (Illustrations 2 and 9), and by plainer balustrades before that date (Illustration 6).
3. External staircases. Most villas and palazzi were designed for formal entrance by a carriage through an archway in the street façade, leading to a courtyard within. An intricate double staircase would lead from the courtyard to the piano nobile. This would be the palazzo's principal entrance to the first-floor reception rooms; the symmetrical flights of steps would turn inwards and outwards as many as four times. Owing to the topography of their elevated sites it was often necessary to approach churches by many steps; these steps were often transformed into long straight marble staircases, in themselves decorative architectural features (illustration 19), in the manner of the Spanish Steps in Rome.
4. Canted, concave, or convex façades (Illustrations 1 and 6). Occasionally in a villa or palazzo, an external staircase would be fitted into the recess created by the curve.
5. The Sicilian belfry. Belfries were not placed beside the church in a campanile tower as is common in Italy, but on the façade itself, often surmounting the central pediment, with one or more bells clearly displayed beneath its own arch, such as at Catania's Collegiata (Illustration 1). In a large church with many bells this usually resulted in an intricately sculpted and decorated arcade at the highest point of the principal façade (Illustration 3). These belfries are among the most enduring and characteristic features of Sicilian Baroque architecture.
6. Inlaid coloured marble set into both floor and walls, especially in church interiors. This particular form of intarsia developed in Sicily from the 17th century (see the floor of illustration 14).
7. Columns that are often deployed singularly, supporting plain arches and thus displaying the influence of the earlier and much plainer Norman period (Illustration 3). Columns are rarely encountered, as elsewhere in Europe, in clustered groups acting as piers, especially in examples of early Sicilian Baroque.
8. Decorated rustication. Sebastiano Serlio had decorated the blocks of ashlar in his rustication; by the end of the 16th century, Sicilian architects were ornamenting the blocks with carvings of leaves, fish-scales, and even sweets and shells; shells were later to become among the most prevalent ornamental symbols of Baroque design. Sometimes the rustication would be used for pillars rather than walls, a reversal of expectations and almost an architectural joke.(illustration 2)
9. The local volcanic lava stone that was used in the construction of many Sicilian Baroque buildings, because this was the most readily available. Many sculptors and stone-cutters of the period lived at the foot of Mount Etna, making a diversity of objects, including balustrades, pillars, fountains and seats for buildings. Shades of black or grey were used to create contrasting decorative effects, accentuating the Baroque love of light and shade (chiaroscuro) as demonstrated in (illustration 2).
10. European influence :
- The Spanish influence. The architectural influence of the ruling Spanish (Illustration 13), although this was a milder influence than that of the Normans. The Spanish style, a more restrained version of French Renaissance architecture, is particularly evident in eastern Sicily, where, owing to minor insurrections, the Spanish maintained a stronger military presence. Messina's 16th-century Porta Grazia (Illustrations 4), built as the entrance to a Spanish Real Cittadella, would not be out of place in any of the towns and citadels built by the Spanish in their colonies elsewhere. The style of this arched city gate, with its ornate mouldings, scrolls and masks was widely copied all over Catania immediately following the earthquake, with many of its features becoming motifs of the Sicilian Baroque.
- Influence of the Austrian and German Baroque.
- Influence of the French Baroque and the styles that dominated the court of Versailles.
- Influence of taste, art and above all British architecture; due to the strong ties that have linked Sicily to England for a long time; especially the aristocracy
While these characteristics never occur all together in the same building, and none are unique to Sicilian Baroque, it is the coupling together which gives the Sicilian Baroque its distinctive air. Other Baroque characteristics, such as broken pediments over windows, the extravagant use of statuary, curved topped windows and doors and flights of external stairs are all emblematic of Baroque architecture, and can all be found on Baroque buildings all over Europe.
## Early Sicilian Baroque
Sicily, a volcanic island in the central Mediterranean, off the Italian peninsula, was colonised by the Greeks, and then ruled by the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ostrogoths, the Muslims, the Normans, the Hohenstaufen, the Angevins, and the Aragonese. It then became a province of the Spanish Empire and later was part of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, before finally being absorbed into the Kingdom of Italy in 1860. Thus, Sicilians have been exposed to a rich sequence of disparate cultures, which is reflected in the extraordinary diversity of architecture on the island.
A form of decorated classical architecture peculiar to Sicily had begun to evolve from the 1530s. Inspired by the ruined Greek architecture and by the Norman cathedrals on the island, this often incorporated Greek architectural motifs such as the Greek key pattern into late Norman architecture with Gothic features such as pointed arches and window apertures. The Sicilian Norman architecture incorporated some Byzantine elements seldom found in Norman architecture elsewhere, and like other Romanesque architecture it went on to incorporate Gothic features. This early ornate architecture differs from that of mainland Europe in not having evolved from Renaissance architecture; instead, it was developed from Norman styles. Renaissance architecture hardly touched Sicily; in the capital city of Palermo, the only remnant of the High Renaissance is the Fontana Pretoria, a water fountain originally made for Don Pietro di Toleda by Florentine artists Franscesco Cammilliani and Michelangelo Naccerino and brought to Sicily when it was already 20 years old (Illustration 5).
Whatever the reason that Renaissance style never became popular in Sicily, it was certainly not ignorance. Antonello Gagini was midway through constructing the Church of Santa Maria di Porto Salvo [it] in 1536 in the Renaissance style when he died; he was superseded by the architect Antonio Scaglione, who completed the building in a Norman style. This style seems to have influenced Sicilian architecture almost up to the time of the 1693 earthquake. Even Mannerism passed the island by. Only in the architecture of Messina could a Renaissance influence be discerned, partly for geographical reasons: within sight of mainland Italy and the most important port in Sicily, Messina was always more amenable to the prevailing tides of fashion outside the island. The town's aristocratic patrons would often call on Florence or Rome to provide them with an architect; one example was the Florentine Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli, who established the Tuscan styles of architecture and sculpture there in the mid-16th century. However, these influences remained largely confined to Messina and the surrounding district. The patronage of the Roman Catholic Church, removed from the influences of Roman fashion, remained conservative in architectural taste and far-reaching in its power.
This is not to say that Sicily was completely isolated from trends elsewhere in Europe. Architecture in the island's major cities was strongly influenced by the family of the sculptor Domenico Gagini, who arrived from Florence in 1463. This family of sculptors and painters decorated churches and buildings with ornate decorative and figurative sculpture. Less than a century after his family had begun to cautiously decorate the island's churches (1531–1537), Antonello Gagini completed the proscenium-like arch of the "Capella della Madonna" in the "Santuario dell'Annunziata" at Trapani. This pedimented arch to the sanctuary has pilasters – not fluted, but decorated heavily with relief busts of the saints; and, most importantly in terms of architecture, the pediment is adorned by reclining saints supporting swags linked to the central shield that crowns the pediment. This ornate pediment, although still unbroken, was one of the first signs that Sicily was forming its own style of decorative architecture. Similar in style is the Chiesa del Gesù (Illustration 14), constructed between 1564 and 1633, which also shows early signs of the Sicilian Baroque.
Thus, a particular brand of Baroque architecture had begun to evolve in Sicily long before the earthquake of 1693. While the majority of those buildings that can be clearly classified as Baroque in style date from around 1650, the scarcity of these isolated, surviving examples of Sicily's 17th-century architectural history makes it hard to fully and accurately evaluate the architecture immediately before the natural disaster: the earthquake destroyed not only most of the buildings, but also most of their documentation. Yet more has been lost in subsequent earthquakes and severe bombing during World War II.
The earliest example of Baroque on the island is Giulio Lasso's Quattro Canti, an octagonal piazza, or circus, constructed around 1610 at the intersection of the city's two principal streets. Around this intersection are four open sides, being the streets, and four matching buildings with identical canted corners. The sides of the four buildings are curved, further heightening the Baroque design of the buildings lining the circus. These four great buildings dominating the circus are each enhanced by a fountain, reminiscent of those of Pope Sixtus V's Quattro Fontane in Rome. However, in Palermo the Baroque theme continues up three storeys of the buildings, which are adorned with statues in recessed niches depicting the four seasons, the four Spanish kings of Sicily, and the four patronesses of Palermo: Saints Cristina, Ninfa, Olivia, and Agata.
While each façade of Quattro Canti is pleasing to the eye, as a scheme it is both out of proportion with the limited size of the piazza and, like most other examples of early Sicilian Baroque, can be considered provincial, naive and heavy-handed, compared with later developments. Whatever its merit, it is evident that during the 17th century the Baroque style in the hands of the local architects and sculptors was already deviating from that of mainland Italy. This localised variation on the mainstream Baroque was not peculiar to Sicily, but occurred as far afield as Bavaria and Russia, where Naryshkin Baroque would be just as eccentric as its Sicilian cousin.
## Sicilian Baroque from 1693
### Earthquake and patrons
The great Sicilian earthquake of 1693 destroyed at least 45 towns and cities, affecting an area of 5,600 square kilometres (2,200 sq mi) and causing the deaths of about 60,000 people. The epicentre of the disaster was offshore, although the exact position remains unknown. Towns which suffered severely were Ragusa, Modica, Scicli, and Ispica. Rebuilding began almost immediately.
The lavishness of the architecture that was to arise from this disaster is connected with the politics of Sicily at the time: Sicily was still officially under Spanish rule, but rule was effectively delegated to the native aristocracy. This was led by the Duke of Camastra, whom the Spanish had appointed viceroy to appease the aristocracy, who were numerous. The aristocracy was relatively concentrated compared to most of Europe, and a gentry class was missing. In the 18th century, one estimate held that there were 228 noble families, who provided Sicily with a ruling class consisting of 58 princes, 27 dukes, 37 marquesses, 26 counts, one viscount and 79 barons; the Golden Book of the Sicilian nobility (last published in 1926) lists even more. In addition to these were the younger scions of the families, with their courtesy titles of nobile or baron.
Architecture was not the only legacy of the Normans. Rule over the peasants (there was no established middle class) was also enforced by a feudal system, unchanged since its introduction following the Norman conquest of 1071. Thus, the Sicilian aristocracy had at their command not only wealth but vast manpower, something that had by this time declined in many other parts of Europe. As in Southern Spain, the huge rural estates remained almost as concentrated as when they had been Roman latifundi. The Sicilian economy, though very largely agriculturally based, was very strong, and became more so during the 18th century as shipping became more efficient and the threat of Muslim piracy died away. The export markets for lemons (for the great 18th century fashion for lemonade) and wines increased greatly, and Sicilian wheat remained, as it had been since Roman times, the backbone of the economy. The disaster that was to give Sicily its modern reputation of poverty, namely the opening-up of the American Midwest to wheat-farming, was a century away. When it came, this permanently cut the price of wheat to less than half, and destroyed the old economy forever.
The aristocracy shared their power only with the Roman Catholic Church. The Church ruled by fear of damnation in the next life and of the Inquisition in the present, and consequently both upper and lower classes gave as generously as they could on all major saints' days. Many priests and bishops were members of the aristocracy. The wealth of the Church in Sicily was further enhanced by the tradition of pressing younger children of the aristocracy to enter monasteries and convents, in order to preserve the family estates from division; however, this was seldom a cheap option as expenses and an ongoing "onerous maintenance" had to be paid to the Church. Thus, the wealth of certain religious orders grew out of all proportion to the economic growth of any other group at this time. This is one of the reasons that so many of the Sicilian Baroque churches and monasteries, such as San Martino delle Scale, were rebuilt after 1693 on such a lavish scale.
Once rebuilding began, the poor rebuilt their basic housing in the same primitive fashion as before. By contrast, the wealthiest residents, both secular and spiritual, became caught in an almost manic orgy of building. Most members of the nobility had several homes in Sicily. For one thing, the Spanish viceroy spent six months of the year in Palermo and six in Catania, holding court in each city, and hence members of the aristocracy needed a town palazzo in each city. Once the palazzi in devastated Catania were rebuilt in the new fashion, the palazzi in Palermo seemed antiquated by comparison, so they too were eventually rebuilt. Following this, from the middle of the 18th century, villas to retire to in the autumn, essentially status symbols, were built at the fashionable enclave at Bagheria. This pattern was repeated, on a smaller scale, throughout the lesser cities of Sicily, each city providing a more entertaining social life and a magnetic draw for the provincial aristocrat than their country estate. The country estate also did not escape the building mania. Often Baroque wings or new façades were added to ancient castles, or country villas were completely rebuilt. Thus, the frenzy of building gained momentum until the increasingly fantastical Baroque architecture demanded by these hedonistic patrons reached its zenith in the mid-18th century.
### New cities
Following the earthquake, a program of rebuilding was rapidly put into action, but before it began in earnest some important decisions were made that would permanently differentiate many Sicilian cities and towns from other European urban developments. The Viceroy, the Duke of Camastra, aware of new trends in town planning, decreed that rather than rebuilding in the medieval plan of cramped narrow streets, the new rebuilding would offer piazze and wider main streets, often on a rational grid plan. The whole plan was often to take a geometric shape such as a perfect square or a hexagon, typical of Renaissance and Baroque town planning. The city of Grammichele is an example of these new cities rebuilt to a hexagonal plan.
This concept was still very new in the 1690s, and few new cities had had reason to be built in Europe – Christopher Wren's city plan after the Great Fire of London in 1666 having been turned down because of the complexities of land ownership there. There were some other examples such as Richelieu, and later Saint Petersburg. The prototype may well have been the new city of Terra del Sole, constructed in 1564. Another of the first towns to be planned using symmetry and order rather than an evolution of small alleys and streets was Alessandria in southern Piedmont. A little later, from 1711, this Baroque form of planning was favoured in the Hispanic colonies of South America, especially by the Portuguese in Brazil. In other parts of Europe, lack of finance, complex land ownership and divided public opinion made radical replanning after disaster too difficult: after 1666, London was rebuilt on its ancient plan, though new extensions to the west were partially on a grid system. In Sicily, public opinion (that of anyone outside the ruling class) counted for nothing, and hence these seemingly revolutionary new concepts of town planning could be freely executed.
In Sicily, the decision was taken not just for fashion and appearance but also because it would minimise the damage to property and life likely to be caused in future quakes. In 1693, the cramped housing and streets had caused buildings to collapse together like dominoes. Although after the earthquake the avenues were broadened and the density of housing was lowered overall, cramped and narrow areas of housing still remained, posing a hazard for the poor. Architecturally and aesthetically, the big advantage of the new order of town planning was that unlike many Italian towns and cities, where one frequently encounters a monumental Renaissance church squeezed terrace-fashion between incongruous neighbours, in urban Baroque design one can step back and actually see the architecture in a more conducive setting in relation to its proportions and perspective. This is most notable in the largely rebuilt towns of Caltagirone, Militello in Val di Catania, Catania, Modica, Noto, Palazzolo Acreide, Ragusa, and Scicli.
One of the finest examples of this new urban planning can be seen at Noto (Illustration 9), the town rebuilt approximately 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) from its original site on Mount Alveria. The old ruined town now known as "Noto Antica" can still be viewed in its ruinous state. The new site chosen was flatter than the old to better facilitate a linear grid-like plan. The principal streets run east to west so they would benefit from a better light and a sunnier disposition. This example of town planning is directly attributable to a learned local aristocrat, Giovanni Battista Landolina; helped by three local architects, he is credited with planning the new city himself.
In these new towns, the aristocracy was allocated the higher areas, where the air was cooler and fresher and the views finest. The church was placed in the town centre (Illustration 8), both for convenience to all and to reflect the church's global and central position; round the pairing of cathedral and episcopal palazzo vescovile were built the convents. The merchants and storekeepers chose their lots on the planned wider streets leading from the main piazza. Finally, the poor were allowed to erect their simple brick huts and houses in the areas nobody else wanted. Lawyers, doctors, and members of the few professions including the more skilled artisans – those who fell between the strictly defined upper and lower class – and were able to afford building plots, often lived on the periphery of the commercial and upper class residential sectors, but equally often these people just lived in a larger or grander house than their neighbours in the poorer areas. However, many of the skilled artists working on the rebuilding lived as part of the extended households of their patrons. In this way Baroque town planning came to symbolise and reflect political authority, and later its style and philosophy spread as far as Annapolis and Savannah in English America, and most notably Haussmann's 19th century re-designing of Paris. The stage was now set for the explosion of Baroque architecture, which was to predominate in Sicily until the early 19th century.
Later, many other Sicilian towns and cities which had been either little damaged or completely untouched by the earthquake, such as Palermo, were also transformed by the Baroque style, as the fashion spread and aristocrats with a palazzo in Catania came to wish their palazzo in the capital were as opulent as that in the second city. In Palermo the , began in 1566, was one of many in the city to be redecorated inside in the 18th century in the Baroque style, with coloured marbles.
### New churches and palazzi
Of Sicily's own form of Baroque, post-1693, it has been said, "The buildings conceived in the wake of this disaster expressed a light-hearted freedom of decoration whose incongruous gaiety was intended, perhaps, to assuage the horror". While this is an accurate description of a style which is almost a celebration of joie de vivre in stone, it is unlikely to be the reason for the choice. As with all architectural styles, the selection of style would have directly linked to current fashion. Versailles had been completed in 1688 in a far sterner Baroque style; Louis XIV's new palace was immediately emulated across Europe by any aristocrat or sovereign in Europe aspiring to wealth, taste, or power. Thus, it was the obvious choice for the "homeless rich" of Sicily, of whom there were hundreds. The excesses of the Baroque-style palazzi and country villas to be constructed in Sicily, however, were soon to make Versailles seem a model of restraint.
As the 18th century dawned, Sicilian architects were employed to create the new palazzi and churches. These architects, often local, were able to design in a more sophisticated style than those of the late 17th century: many had been trained in mainland Italy and had returned with a more detailed understanding of the Baroque idiom. Their work inspired less-travelled Sicilian designers. Very importantly, these architects were also assisted by the books of engravings by Domenico de' Rossi, who for the first time wrote down text with his engravings, giving the precise dimensions and measurements of many of the principal Renaissance and Baroque façades in Rome. In this way, the Renaissance finally came late to Sicily by proxy.
At this stage of its development, Sicilian Baroque still lacked the freedom of style that it was later to acquire. Giovanni Battista Vaccarini was the leading Sicilian architect during this period. He arrived on the island in 1730 bringing with him a fusion of the concepts of Bernini and Borromini, and introduced to the island's architecture a unified movement and a play of curves, which would have been unacceptable in Rome itself. However, his works are considered of lesser quality than those which were to come. Notable works which date from this period are the 18th century wings of the Palazzo Biscari at Catania and Vaccarini's Cattedrale di Sant'Agata, also in Catania. On this building Vaccarini quite clearly copied the capitals from Guarino Guarini's Architettura Civile. It is this frequent copying of established designs that causes the architecture from this period, while opulent, also to be disciplined and almost reined in. The style of Vaccarini, appointed City Architect in 1736, was to dominate Catania for the next decades.
A second hindrance to Sicilian architects' fully achieving their potential earlier was that frequently they were only rebuilding a damaged structure, and as a consequence having to match their designs to what had been before, or remained. The Cathedral of San Giorgio at Modica (Illustration 10) is an example. It was badly damaged in an earthquake of 1613, rebuilt in 1643 in a Baroque style while keeping the medieval layout, then damaged again in 1693. Rebuilding again began in 1702, by an unknown architect; Rosario Gagliardi oversaw the façade's completion in 1760,
There were also other influences at work at this time. Between 1718 and 1734 Sicily was ruled personally by Charles VI from Vienna, and as a result close ties with Austrian architecture can be perceived. Several buildings on the island are shameless imitations of the works of Fischer von Erlach, who had begun to rebuild Schönbrunn Palace in 1686 in a simple form of Baroque; this form was later to be reproduced in Sicily in the final years of its Baroque era. The palace also had an external staircase (removed in 1746) similar to those that later evolved in Sicily. One Sicilian architect, Tommaso Napoli, a monk, visited Vienna twice early in the century, returning with a store of engraving and drawings. He was later the architect of two country villas of the early Sicilian Baroque period, remarkable for their concave and convex walls and the complex design of their external staircases. One villa, his Villa Palagonia in Bagheria, begun in 1705, is the most complex and ingenious of any constructed in Sicily's Baroque era: its double staircase of straight flights, frequently changing direction, was to be the prototype of a distinguishing feature of Sicilian Baroque.
Later, a new wave of architects who would master the Baroque sentiments, aware of Rococo interior styles beginning elsewhere to gain an ascendancy over Baroque, would go on to develop the flamboyance and "elastic conceptions of space" that today are synonymous with the term Sicilian Baroque.
## High Sicilian Baroque
Around 1730, the Baroque style gradually began to break away from the defined Roman style of Baroque and gain an even stronger individuality, for two reasons: the rush to rebuild was subsiding and construction was becoming more leisurely and thoughtful; and a new clutch of home-grown Sicilian architects came to the forefront. This new generation had watched the rebuilding in the Baroque, and studied the engravings and architectural books and treatises arriving ever more frequently from the mainland. However, they were not like their predecessors (the former students of the Romans), and consequently were able to formulate strong individual styles of their own. They included Andrea Palma, Rosario Gagliardi and Tommaso Napoli. While taking account of the Baroque of Naples and Rome, they now adapted their designs for the local needs and traditions. Their use of resources and exploitation of the sites was often wildly inventive. Napoli and then Vaccarini had promoted the use of the external staircase, which was now taken to a new dimension: hilltop churches would be reached by fantastical flights of steps evoking Vaccarini's mentor Francesco de Sanctis's Spanish Steps in Rome.
Façades of churches often came to resemble wedding cakes rather than places of worship as the architects grew in confidence, competence, and stature. Church interiors, which until this date had been slightly pedestrian, came especially in Palermo to be decorated in a riot of inlaid marbles of a wide variety of colours. Anthony Blunt has described this decoration as "either fascinating or repulsive, but however the individual spectator may react to it, this style is a characteristic manifestation of Sicilian exuberance, and must be classed amongst the most important and original creations of Baroque art on the island". This is the key to Sicilian Baroque: it was ideally matched to the Sicilian personality, and this was the reason it evolved so dramatically on the island. Nowhere in Sicily is the development of the new Baroque style more evident than in Ragusa and Catania.
### Ragusa
Ragusa was very badly damaged in 1693. The town is in two halves, divided by a deep ravine known as the "Valle dei Ponti": the older town of Ragusa Ibla, and the higher Ragusa Superiore.
Ragusa Ibla, the lower city, boasts an impressive array of Baroque architecture, which includes the Duomo of San Giorgio by Rosario Gagliardi, designed in 1738 (Illustration 12). In the design of this church, Gagliardi exploited the difficult terrain of the hillside site. The church towers impressively over a massive marble staircase of some 250 steps, a Baroque feature, especially exploited in Sicily due to the island's topography. The tower seems to explode from the façade, accentuated by the columns and pilasters canted against the curved walls. Above the doorways and window apertures, pediments scroll and curve with a sense of freedom and movement which would have been unthinkable to those earlier architects inspired by Bernini and Borromini. The neoclassical dome was not added until 1820.
In an alley connecting Ragusa Ibla with Ragusa Superiore is the church of Santa Maria delle Scale. This church is interesting, though badly damaged in the earthquake. Only half the church was rebuilt in Baroque style, while the surviving half was kept in the original Norman (with Gothic features), thus demonstrating the evolution of Sicilian Baroque.
The Palazzo Zacco is one of the more notable Baroque buildings of the city, its Corinthian columns supporting balconies of amazing wrought iron work, while supports of grotesques mock, shock or amuse the passerby. The palazzo was built in the second half of the 18th century by the Baron Melfi di San Antonio. It was later acquired by the Zacco family, after which it is named. The building has two street façades, each with six wide balconies bearing the coat of arms of the Melfi family, a frame of acanthus leaves from which a putto leans. The balconies, a feature of the palazzo, are notable for the differing corbels which support them, ranging from putti to musicians and grotesques. The focal points of the principal façade are the three central balconies, divided by columns with Corinthian capitals. Here the balconies are supported by images of musicians with grotesque faces.
The Ragusa Cathedral in Ragusa Superiore was built between 1718 and 1778. Its principal façade is pure Baroque, containing fine carvings and sculptures. The cathedral has a high Sicilian belfry in the same style. The ornate Baroque interior is separated into three colonnaded aisles. Ragusa Superiore was replanned following 1693 around the cathedral and displays an unusual phenomenon of Sicilian Baroque: the palazzi here are peculiar to this town, of only two storeys and long, with the central bay only emphasised by a balcony and an arch to the inner garden. This very Portuguese style, probably designed to minimise damage in future earthquakes, is very different from the palazzi in Ragusa Ibla, which are in true Sicilian style. Unusually, Baroque lingered on here until the early 19th century. The last palazzo built here was in the Baroque form but with columns of Roman Doric and neoclassical balconies.
### Catania
Sicily's second city, Catania, was the most damaged of all the larger cities in 1693, with only the medieval Castello Ursino and three tribunes of the cathedral remaining; thus it was replanned and rebuilt. The new design separated the city into quarters, divided by two roads meeting at an intersection known as the Piazza del Duomo (Cathedral Square). Rebuilding was supervised by the Bishop of Catania, and the city's only surviving architect, Alonzo di Benedetto [it]. Di Benedetto headed a team of junior architects called in from Messina, which quickly began to rebuild, concentrating first on the Piazza del Duomo. Three palazzi are situated here, the Bishop's Palace, the Seminario and one other. The architects worked in complete harmony and it is impossible to distinguish di Benedetto's work from that of his junior colleagues. The work is competent but not remarkable, with decorated rustication in the 17th-century Sicilian style, but often the decoration on the upper floors is superficial. This is typical of the Baroque of this period immediately after the earthquake.
In 1730, Vaccarini arrived in Catania as the appointed city architect and immediately impressed on the architecture the Roman Baroque style. The pilasters lose their rustication and support Roman type cornices and entablatures, or curved pediments, and free-standing columns support balconies. Vaccarini also exploited the local black lava stone as a decorative feature rather than a general building material, using it intermittently with other materials, and spectacularly for an obelisk supported on the back of the Catanian heraldic elephant, for a fountain in the style of Bernini in front of the new Town hall. Vaccarini's principal façade to Catania's cathedral, dedicated to Santa Agata, shows strong Spanish influences even at this late stage of Sicilian Baroque. Also in the city is Stefano Ittar's Basilica della Collegiata, built around 1768, and an example of Sicilian Baroque at its most stylistically simple.
## Church interiors
Sicilian church exteriors had been decorated in elaborate styles from the first quarter of the 17th century, with ample use of sculpture, stucco, frescoes, and marble (Illustration 14). As the post-earthquake churches were becoming completed in the late 1720s, interiors also began to reflect this external decoration, becoming lighter and less intense (compare illustration 14 to the later interior of illustration 15), with profuse sculpted ornamentation of pillars, cornices, and pediments, often in the form of putti, flora, and fauna. Inlaid coloured marbles on floors and walls in complex patterns are one of the most defining features of the style. These patterns with their roundels of porphyry are often derived from designs found in the Norman cathedrals of Europe, again demonstrating the Norman origins of Sicilian architecture. The high altar is usually the pièce de resistance: in many instances a single block of coloured marble, decorated with gilt scrolls and festoons, and frequently inset with other stones such as lapis lazuli and agate. Steps leading to the altar dais are characteristically curving between concave and convex and in many cases decorated with inlaid coloured marbles. An example of this is in the church of St Zita in Palermo.
The building of Sicily's churches would typically be funded not just by individual religious orders but also by an aristocratic family. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of Sicily's nobility did not choose to have their mortal remains displayed for eternity in the Catacombe dei Cappuccini, but were buried quite conventionally in vaults beneath their family churches. It has been said, though, that "the funeral of a Sicilian aristocrat was one of the great moments of his life, and the luxury he had enjoyed in this life was to lead him into the next". Funerals became tremendous shows of wealth; a result of this ostentation was that the stone memorial slabs covering the burial vaults today provide an accurate barometer of the development of Baroque and marble inlay techniques at any specific time. For instance, those from the first half of the 17th century are of simple white marble decorated with an incised armorial bearing, name, date, etc. From c. 1650, small quantities of coloured marble inlay appear, forming patterns, and this can be seen developing until, by the end of the century, the coats of arms and calligraphy are entirely of inset coloured marble, with decorative patterned borders. Long after Baroque began to fall from fashion in the 1780s, Baroque decor was still deemed more suitable for Catholic ritual than the new, pagan-based neoclassicism.
The Church of San Benedetto in Catania (Illustration 15) is a fine example of a Sicilian Baroque interior, decorated between 1726 and 1762, the period when Sicilian Baroque was at the height of its fashion and individuality. The ceilings were frescoed by the artist Giovanni Tuccari. The most spectacular part of the church's decoration is the nuns' choir (Illustration 15), created c. 1750, which was designed in such a way that the nuns' voices could be heard during services, but the nuns themselves were still quite separate from and unseen by the less spiritual world outside.
## Palazzi interiors
Frequently the interiors of the palazzi are less elaborate than those of Sicily's Baroque churches. Many were finished with little ornate interior decoration because they took so long to build: by the time they were completed, Baroque had passed from fashion; in these cases, the principal rooms were frequently decorated in a neoclassical style influenced by the late 18th century Sicilian Anglomania and particularly an admiration of Robert Adam and Wedgewood pottery. However, in true Sicilian style, even this more chaste style would often be embellished with Baroque trompe-l'œil figures and colourful Sicilian tiled floors, such as can be found at the Villa Spedalotto at Bagheria.
Often a fusion of the two styles is found, as in the ballroom wing of the Palazzo Ajutamicristo in Palermo, built by Andrea Giganti in 1763, where the ballroom ceiling was frescoed by Giuseppe Crestadoro with allegorical scenes framed by Baroque gilded motifs in plaster. This ceiling was already old-fashioned when it was finished, and the rest of the room was decorated in a far simpler mode. When Baroque interior decoration did occur, as elsewhere in Italy, the finest and most decorated rooms were those on the piano nobile, reserved for guests and entertaining. Occasionally, however, the late date of completion means that the decoration can be described as Rococo – the flamboyant swan song of the Baroque era.
A further reason for the absence of Baroque decoration, and the most common, is that most rooms were never intended for public view and, therefore, expensive decoration. Many of the palazzi were vast; the Palazzo Biscari has 700 rooms. This was necessary because the household of a Sicilian aristocrat, beginning with himself, his wife and many children, would typically also contain a collection of poorer relatives and other extended family members, all of whom had minor apartments in the house. Moreover, there were paid employees, often including a private chaplain or confessor, a majordomo, governesses, secretary, archivist, accountant, librarian, and innumerable lower servants, such as a porter to ring a bell a prescribed number of times according to the rank of an approaching guest. Often the servants' extended families, especially if elderly, also lived in the palazzo. Thus, many rooms were needed to house the household. These everyday living quarters, even the bedrooms of "Maestro and Maestra di Casa", were often simply decorated and furnished. Gérard Gefen states in his book Sicily, Land of the Leopard Princes that bedrooms were kept austere as they were rooms for fighting off temptation and sin as much as for sleeping.
Further rooms were required by the Sicilian tradition that it was a sign of poor breeding to permit even mere acquaintances to stay in local inns. Any visiting foreigner, especially from a distant European metropolis, was regarded as a special trophy and added social prestige. Hence the Sicilian aristocrat's home was seldom empty or quiet.
The rooms of the piano nobile were entered formally from an external Baroque double staircase: they consisted of a suite of large and small salons, with one very large salon being the principal room of the house, often used as a ballroom. Sometimes the guest bedrooms were sited here too, but by the end of the 18th century they were more often on a secondary floor above. If decorated during the Baroque era, the rooms would be profusely ornamented. Walls were frequently mirrored, the mirrors inset into gilded frames in the walls, often alternating with paintings similarly framed, while moulded nymphs and shepherdesses decorated the spaces between. Ceilings were high and frescoed, and from the ceiling hung huge coloured chandeliers of Murano glass, while further light came from gilded sconces flanking the mirrors adorning the walls. One of the most notable rooms in this style is the Gallery of Mirrors in Palermo's Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi (Illustration 16), a building described as "Sicily's most famous palazzo". This room with its frescoed ceiling by Gaspare Fumagalli [it] is, however, one of the few Baroque rooms in this Baroque palazzo, which was (from 1750) extended and transformed by its owner Marianna Valguarnera, mostly in the later neoclassical style. Baroque interior decoration eventually reached such an exuberance that it became known as Rococo: this is exemplified by the internal staircase (Illustration 17) at the Palazzo Biscari, completed in 1763.
Furniture during the Baroque era was in keeping with the style: ornate, gilded and frequently with marble used for tabletops. The furniture was transient within the house, frequently moved between rooms as required, while leaving other rooms unfurnished. Sometimes furniture was specifically commissioned for a certain room, for example to match a silk wall panel within a gilt frame. For the greater part of the 18th century furniture would always be left arranged against a wall, never in the later conversational style in the centre of a room, which in the Baroque era was always left empty: an arrangement which displayed the marble, or more often ceramic, patterned floor tiles.
Common to both church and palazzi interior design was the stucco work. Stucco is an important component of the Baroque design and philosophy, as it seamlessly combines architecture, sculpture, and painting in three-dimensional form. Its combination with trompe l'œil ceilings and walls in Baroque illusionistic painting confuses reality and art. While in churches the stucco could represent angels and putti linked by swags of flowers, in a private house it might represent musical instruments or the owner's favourite foods.
Changing use over the past 250 years has simplified palazzo decor further, as the ground floors are now usually shops, banks, or restaurants, and the upper floors divided into apartments, their interiors lost or decayed.
## Late Sicilian Baroque
Baroque eventually went out of fashion. In some parts of Europe, it metamorphosed into the Rococo, but not in Sicily where the Rococo is only found internally. No longer ruled by Austria, Sicily, from 1735 officially the Kingdom of Sicily, was ruled by the King of Naples, Ferdinand IV. Hence Palermo was in constant association with the principal capital Naples, where there was architecturally a growing reversion to the more classical styles of architecture. Coupled with this, many of the more cultured Sicilian nobility developed a fashionable obsession with all things French, from philosophy to arts, fashion, and architecture. Many of them visited Paris in pursuit of these interests and returned with the latest architectural engravings and theoretical treatises.
The French architect Léon Dufourny was in Sicily between 1787 and 1794 to study and analyse the ancient Greek temples on the island. Thus Sicilians rediscovered their ancient past, which with its classical idioms was now the height of fashion. The change in tastes did not come about overnight. Baroque remained popular on the island, but now Sicilian balconies, extravagant as ever, would be placed next to severe classical columns. Dufourny began designing in Palermo, and his "Entrance Temple" (1789) to the Palermo Botanical Garden was the first building in Sicily in a style based on the Greek Doric order. It is pure neoclassical architecture, as established in England since 1760, and it was a sign of things to come.
It was Dufourny's great friend and fellow architect Giuseppe Marvuglia who was to preside over the gradual decline of Sicilian Baroque. In 1784 he designed the Palazzo Belmonte Riso (Illustration 21), a good example of the period of architectural transition, combining both Baroque and neoclassical motifs, built around an arcaded courtyard providing Baroque masses of light and shade, or chiaroscuro. The main façade, punctuated by giant pilasters, also had Baroque features, but the skyline was unbroken. The pilasters were undecorated, simple, and Ionic, and supported an undecorated entablature. Above the windows were classical unbroken pediments. Sicilian Baroque was waning.
By the closing years of the 18th century, impoverished Sicily was ruled from Naples by the weak Ferdinand IV and his dominant wife. In 1798 and again in 1806, the King was forced by the invading French to flee Naples to Sicily. The French were only kept at bay from Sicily by an expeditionary force of 17,000 British troops, and Sicily was now ruled by Britain in effect if not in name. King Ferdinand then in 1811 imposed Sicily's first tax, at a single stroke alienating his aristocracy.
However, the British influence in Sicily was to provide Sicilian Baroque with one last flourish. Marvuglia, recognising the new fashion for all things British, developed the style he had first cautiously used at Palazzo Belmonte Riso in 1784, combining some of the plainer, more solid elements of Baroque with Palladian motifs rather than Palladian designs. The late Sicilian Baroque was similar in style to the Baroque popular in England at the beginning of the 18th century, popularised by Sir John Vanbrugh with such edifices as Blenheim Palace. An example is Marvuglia's Church of San Francesco di Sales, which is almost English in its interpretation of Baroque. However, this was only a temporary success and the neoclassical style was soon dominant. Few aristocrats could now afford to build, and the new style was mainly used in public and civil buildings such as those at the Palermo Botanical Garden. Sicilian architects – even Andrea Giganti, once a competent architect in Baroque – now began to design in the neoclassical style, but in the version of the neoclassical adopted by fashionable France. An example is his Villa Galletti at Bagheria, inspired by the work of Ange-Jacques Gabriel. A contemporary traveller, the Comte de Borch, noted the French influence, describing the villa as "décorée à la française, avec trumeaux, boiseries légères, etc."
## Decline
The decline of Sicilian Baroque was inevitable. Not only were tastes changing generally, but the aristocratic money was running out. During the 17th century, the aristocracy had lived principally on their landed estates, tending and improving them, and as a result their income also increased. During the 18th century, the nobility gradually migrated towards the cities, in particular Palermo, to enjoy the social delights of the Viceroy's court and Catania. Their town palazzi grew in size and splendour, to the detriment of the abandoned estates, which were still expected to provide the revenue. The land agents left to run the estates over time became less efficient, or corrupt, often both. Consequently, aristocratic incomes fell. The aristocracy borrowed money using the estates as surety, until the value of the neglected estates fell below the money borrowed against them. Moreover, Sicily was by now as unstable politically as its nobility were financially.
Ferdinand's unpopular tax of 1811 was rescinded by the British in 1812, who then imposed a British style constitution on the island. One legal innovation of this time of particular consequence for the aristocracy was that creditors, who had previously only been able to enforce repayments of the interest on a loan or mortgage, could now seize property. Property began to change hands in smaller parcels at auctions, and consequently a land-owning bourgeoisie immediately began to flourish. Revolts against the Bourbons in 1821 and 1848 divided the nobility, and liberalism was in the air. These factors, coupled with the social and political upheaval of the following Risorgimento in the 19th century, meant the Sicilian aristocracy was a doomed class, having to live off their capital. Immediately following the Risorgimento, Sicily's annexation to the new Italian state was economically disastrous for the island, in no small part due to the relaxation of foreign exchange, which was advantageous only to the more industrial north of the new kingdom, but forced the more agricultural south to compete in the North American commodity markets. Furthermore, because of their neglect and dereliction of noblesse oblige, an essential element of the feudal system, the countryside was often ruled by bandits outside the enclosed villages, and the once grand country villas were decaying. The dominance of the Sicilian upper class was over.
As with the early days of Sicilian Baroque, the first buildings of the new neoclassical era were often copies or hybrids of the two styles. The Palazzo Ducezio (Illustration 19) was begun in 1746, and the ground floor with arcades creating play of light and shadow is pure Baroque. However, when a few years later the upper floor was added, despite the use of Baroque broken pediments above the windows, the neoclassical French influence is very pronounced, highlighted by the central curved bay. The Sicilian Baroque was gradually and slowly being superseded by French neoclassicism.
## Legacy
Sicilian Baroque is today recognised as an architectural style, largely due to the work of Sacheverall Sitwell, whose Southern Baroque Art of 1924 was the first book to appreciate the style, followed by the more academic work of Anthony Blunt in 1968.
Most of the Baroque palazzi continued in private ownership throughout the 19th century, as the old aristocracy either married middle-class money or fell further into debt. There were a few exceptions and some of these still retain their ancestral palazzi today. Thanks to the continuing religious devotion of the Sicilian people, many of the Sicilian Baroque churches are today still in the use for which they were designed. Large parts of Messina, rebuilt after the 1783 earthquake, were destroyed by another in 1908.
However, much of the blame for the decay and ruinous state of preservation of so many palazzi must fall not just on owners unwilling to accept change, but on the political agendas of successive socialist governments. Some of the finest Baroque villas and palazzi are still in ruins following the United States bombing raids of 1943. In many cases, no attempt has been made to restore or even secure them. Those that survived the raids in good repair, and also some of those that didn't, including Palazzo Lampedusa, the Palermo home of the Princes of Lampedusa, are often sub-divided into offices or apartments, their Baroque interiors dismantled, divided, and sold.
The remaining members of the Sicilian aristocracy who still inhabit their ancestral palazzi are unable to make opening their houses to tourism a major source of income, unlike some Northern, especially English, counterparts. The local equivalent of the National Trust is very small, and there is much less local interest among the general population. The princes, marquesses, and counts of Sicily still living in their houses dwell in splendid isolation, surrounded often by beauty and decay. It is only today that both owners and the state are awakening to the possibility that if action is not taken soon it will be too late to save this particular part of the Sicilian heritage.
As Sicily now becomes a more politically stable, secure and less corrupt environment, the Baroque palazzi are slowly beginning to open their doors to an eager paying public, American and Northern European as much as Italian. In 1963, when the movie The Leopard was released, the Gangi Palace ballroom was almost unique in having been a film set, but today long unused salons and ballrooms are hosting corporate and public events. Some palazzi are offering a bed and breakfast service to paying guests, once again providing impressive hospitality to visitors to Sicily, the purpose for which they were originally intended.
In 2002, UNESCO selectively included Baroque monuments of Val di Noto into its World Heritage List as "providing outstanding testimony to the exuberant genius of late Baroque art and architecture" and "representing the culmination and final flowering of Baroque art in Europe.
## Notable architects
- Paolo Amato
- Giacomo Amato
- Mariano Smiriglio
- Angelo Italia
- Rosario Gagliardi
- Andrea Giganti
- Gaspare Guercio
- Guarino Guarini
- Stefano Ittar
- Paolo Labisi
- Giulio Lasso
- Giuseppe Venanzio Marvuglia
- Tommaso Napoli
- Andrea Palma
- Vincenzo Sinatra
- Giovanni Battista Vaccarini
- Francesco Battaglia
## See also
- List of architectural styles
- Maltese Baroque architecture
|
1,738,084 |
Starvin' Marvin
| 1,172,513,283 | null |
[
"1997 American television episodes",
"Ethiopia in fiction",
"South Park (season 1) episodes",
"Television episodes about genetic engineering",
"Television episodes about poverty",
"Thanksgiving television episodes"
] |
"Starvin' Marvin" is the eighth episode of the first season of the American animated television series South Park. It first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on November 19, 1997. In the episode, Cartman, Kenny, Kyle and Stan send money to an African charity hoping to get a sports watch, but are instead sent an Ethiopian child whom they dub "Starvin' Marvin". Later, Cartman is accidentally sent to Ethiopia, where he learns activist Sally Struthers is hoarding the charity's food for herself. In an accompanying subplot, after genetically engineered turkeys attack South Park residents, Chef rallies the residents to fight back, in a parody of the film Braveheart.
The episode was written and directed by series co-creator Trey Parker, being his first solo credit as writer-direcctor for the show and was also the first South Park Thanksgiving-themed episode. It simultaneously served as a satire on American indifference toward impoverished countries, and on the humanitarianism industry.
The episode received generally positive reviews, and several commentators have described it as a classic South Park episode. According to Nielsen Media Research, it was watched by 3.68 million viewers during its original broadcast. Parker and Stone said they were unhappy with the turkey subplot, which they wrote only because they felt obligated to include a B story. Sally Struthers was reportedly deeply offended by her portrayal in the episode. In addition to Starvin' Marvin, who became a popular minor character, the episode introduced regular characters like Kenny's family members Stuart, Carol and Kevin McCormick.
## Plot
After seeing a commercial about starving children in Africa, Cartman, Stan, Kenny and Kyle send money to Sally Struthers' charity organization, the Christian Children's Fund. They do not care about the cause, but want the free sports watch that comes with the sponsorship. However, due to a miscommunication, an Ethiopian boy is delivered to the boys instead of the watch. Although initially shocked, the four boys befriend him, and Cartman names the boy Starvin' Marvin ("Marvin" being given to him by the apparent pronunciation of his name when he was talking in his native language). Meanwhile, mobs of wild turkeys begin attacking and killing South Park residents. The mad scientist Dr. Mephisto tries to warn Mayor McDaniels that genetically engineered turkeys he had been breeding to feed to the poor have gone crazy and are now attacking humans. Mephisto is instead ignored and ridiculed by McDaniels.
The boys take Marvin to an all-you-can-eat buffet, where he is shocked by how much food the townsfolk consume compared to his home country, and by how wasteful Cartman is with his food. Back at school, Mr. Garrison announces the food drive is a failure because students have brought in only a few cans of creamed corn. The boys present Marvin to the class during show and tell, after which Mr. Garrison and Principal Victoria tell the boys they will have to call the Red Cross and send Marvin home. Meanwhile, Dr. Mephisto shows Chef that the turkey DNA is growing so rapidly that the turkeys might take over the world if they are not stopped.
The FBI arrives to take Marvin back to Ethiopia, but Marvin tricks them into taking Cartman instead. Cartman, who had previously cared little for the impoverished in Africa, is unable to bear the lack of food and poor living conditions there; furthermore, he attempts to convince the Red Cross there that he's not one of the Africans, but fails. While praying to God in Addis Ababa, Cartman says he is sorry he made fun of poor people. He eventually finds a Red Cross shack, where Sally Struthers is hoarding all the food meant for charity. After a brief argument, Cartman exposes all of Struthers's hoarding of the food supply to the Ethiopians, who then take control of the food supply.
Back in South Park, Chef rallies the townspeople (in a parody of Braveheart) to fight the genetically engineered turkeys; in response, one of the turkeys also rallies the other turkeys to fight the townspeople. A massive battle ensues in which Kenny is killed (his eye is poked and gouged out), but eventually the South Park residents kill all the turkeys and claim victory. The FBI returns Cartman to South Park and takes Marvin home, but not before he brings the bodies of the dead turkeys back to Ethiopia for everyone to eat. Marvin is then hailed as a hero by his people while they pass Struthers being bound and gagged over a fire.
In the end, back in South Park, Kenny's family give their Thanksgiving blessings as they prepare to eat a can of green beans, but realize afterward that they do not have a can opener.
## Production
"Starvin' Marvin" was written by Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Pam Brady. Directed by Parker, it was the first official South Park Thanksgiving episode. Parker and Stone said "Starvin' Marvin", like other holiday episodes, proved difficult to make because they felt a responsibility to constantly top other previous holiday shows. Stone provided the voice of Marvin. According to the official South Park website, the character was not named after the Starvin' Marvin's brand of American gas stations, and the similarity between the two names is just a coincidence. Jerry Seinfeld, comedian and star of the popular sitcom Seinfeld, contacted Parker and Stone and asked if he could record a guest voice performance because he was a fan of the show. Parker and Stone offered Seinfeld the throwaway background part of one of the turkeys, but Seinfeld's agent was "a bit put off" by the offer and did not accept.
The episode was partially inspired by the commercials for the Christian Children's Fund, in which Sally Struthers encourages viewers to donate money to provide food for starving children in Africa. Parker said he did not really believe Struthers was hoarding food from the charity, but he came up with the concept because he found it funny that such an obese woman would make a public plea for food for others. Parker said he had always wondered how a starving African child would react if they were taken to a large buffet dinner at an American restaurant, with "people leaving tons of food on their plates", which served as further inspiration for the episode. Parker and Stone originally planned for Struthers to die at the end of the episode and have the African children eat her and live off her fat; Comedy Central executives told the duo they could not kill Struthers, although celebrities have been killed off in subsequent episodes without any objections from the network.
Parker and Stone were unhappy with the turkey attack subplot, which they felt "never really went anywhere" and ended abruptly without any satisfying conclusion. They nevertheless included it because they felt obligated to include a B story, since every episode in the season so far had included one. Later in the series, they said they realized this was not necessary and made many episodes without a B story. Although the duo liked the "payoff" of the Starvin' Marvin main plot, they did not know how to end the turkey subplot, so they simply had the characters kill all the turkeys and claim that there were none left; they decided this sudden ending was the funniest possible option. Stone said of the subplot, "The turkeys were just an excuse to have the Braveheart sequence." The animators enjoyed creating the turkey battle scene, which was designed to be shown in widescreen aspect ratio while the rest of the episode was animated normally. However, the animation proved to be very difficult and took a long time to do because it involved a larger number of characters and animals in one scene than had ever been featured previously in the show. Some of the characters in the far background were animated in a gray and shadowy style, which Parker said was not so much a visual effect as it was a "lighting effect meaning we didn't want to draw all these people".
In addition to Starvin' Marvin himself, the episode included the first appearances of several regular characters: Kyle's father Gerald Broflovski, as well as Stuart, Carol, and Kevin McCormick, father, mother, and brother (respectively) of Kenny, who were portrayed as incredibly poor and unhygienic. In a continuity error, the couple killed by the turkeys at Stark's Pond can be seen alive and unharmed during the turkey battle scene.
## Themes
Psychologists Gilbert Reyes and Gerard Jacobs have cited "Starvin' Marvin" as one example of popular culture voicing criticisms of humanitarianism "as an overblown industry leeching off others' suffering and harming its purported beneficiaries". The episode also highlights America's consumerist society and American indifference toward impoverished countries. The moral of the episode, explained by Stan in the final scene, encourages viewers to see suffering citizens of impoverished countries as real people, rather than images on television screens, which tend to make the viewers feel detached and alienated from them.
"Starvin' Marvin" explores and satirizes gluttony in the US, particularly through its unflattering portrayal of Sally Struthers, who gorges on donated food meant for starving children. The greed and wastefulness shown in the buffet scene, as well as Cartman's overall greediness and lack of understanding regarding the plight of starving African children, has been said to demonstrate an over-abundance and decadence typically associated with Americans. The destructive rampage of the turkeys provides a commentary on genetic engineering. Scott Calef, a philosophy professor who studies popular culture, said the destruction caused by the turkeys, despite the best of intentions by Dr. Mephisto, is indicative of the unpredictable nature and ethical ambiguity of the use of genetic engineering for the betterment of humankind.
## Cultural references and impact
Starvin' Marvin proved to be a popular minor character, even though he would appear in only one more episode, the third season episode "Starvin' Marvin in Space". The character was later featured in South Park Rally, a 2000 racing video game from developer Acclaim, in which Marvin races the other characters in a motorized wheat sack. Marvin is also featured in South Park 10: The Game, a platform mobile game featuring a number of South Park characters. Eric Cartman's line, "That's a bad Starvin' Marvin!", became one of the most popular lines from the first season of the show. Starvin' Marvin is from the African nation Ethiopia, which experienced two famines in the mid-1980s. The American authorities who address his parents identify his family's surname as "Click Click Derk".
The scenes in which Chef, and later the lead turkey, don blue and white war paint and speak inspirational words to their armies are a parody of Braveheart, the 1995 Mel Gibson-directed film about Scottish historical hero William Wallace. Parker said it was the first of many times a film was spoofed in a South Park episode, even though both he and Stone enjoyed Braveheart. During class, Mr. Garrison incorrectly tells the children the internationally known English pop singer Engelbert Humperdinck was the first man to walk on the Moon. Also in the classroom, when it is suggested some poor people would rather die than go to a poorhouse, Cartman says, "Well then perhaps they should – and decrease the surplus population!" The line is lifted word-for-word from the Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Carol, prompting Mr. Garrison to respond, "Okay, kids, that's enough Dickens for one day." Kyle incorrectly tells Stan that Sally Struthers appeared on Full House, an American sitcom that ran from 1987 to 1995; she actually starred in the 1970s series All in the Family. When Dr. Mephisto asks Chef to look into his microscope, Chef says he sees "an extreme close-up of Vanessa Redgrave's private parts", a reference to the Academy Award-winning English actress. At the end of the episode, Stan says it is important to remember the images of starving children on television are "just as real as you or I." Kyle says by that logic, MacGyver is a real person too, a reference to the secret agent protagonist from the 1980s television series of the same name.
Tom Vogt, who served as the editor of South Park for several years, watched a bootleg copy of "Starvin' Marvin" and several other episodes of South Park before driving to Colorado to seek a job with the show. He was hired as the editor after contacting one of the South Park animators who used to work for the same company as he had.
## Release and reception
"Starvin' Marvin" first aired in the United States on Comedy Central on November 19, 1997. In its original American broadcast, "Starvin' Marvin" received a Nielsen rating of 4.8, meaning the episode was seen by about 2.2 million households in the US. Television journalists described the rating as "astonishing" by Comedy Central standards; at the time, the network averaged a 0.6 rating (276,000 households) during prime time, and prior to South Park, the channel's highest rating was a 2.7 (1.24 million households) for the second-season premiere of Absolutely Fabulous. Several reviewers have described "Starvin' Marvin" as one of South Park's "classic episodes". Parker said the emotional moment when Starvin' Marvin returned home with all the turkeys made his mother cry, marking the first time he and Stone heard of an emotional reaction to their show.
After the episode aired, Parker and Stone received feedback that audiences felt "Starvin' Marvin" was especially unkind to Struthers. Although they did not speak to her themselves, the duo received word that Struthers was a fan of the show until "Starvin' Marvin" aired, after which she was very upset and reportedly reacted emotionally over her portrayal. Struthers was particularly saddened by the fact that her character steals food from the same starving children she had been working to help. Parker and Stone were slightly remorseful when they learned of her reaction, and have said they did not have anything against Struthers personally. Nevertheless, Struthers was portrayed in an even less flattering way in the third season episode "Starvin' Marvin in Space" as a Jabba the Hutt-like creature. In a DVD commentary track, Parker said of Struthers, "Dude, you're really setting yourself up if you're going to be that fat and go on the air talking about [starving children]. ... We don't think she's a bad person, she's probably nice to try to do this, but cut down on the Twinkies a little bit before going on the air."
Tom Carson, television critic for The Village Voice, praised the episode, which he said "featured some amazing sick jokes about American affluence and obliviousness". Dianne Williamson of the Telegram & Gazette praised "Starvin' Marvin" for taking a chance with the source material, and said, "Often I'm in awe at the courage of these [South Park] creators." The Advertiser of Lafayette, Louisiana, called the episode "hysterical" and particularly praised its satire of American consumerism. The St. Paul Pioneer Press described the episode as "hilarious" and said, "We know we shouldn't laugh, but we can't help it." Vicki Englund of The Courier-Mail complimented the "really bizarre storyline" and the moral of the episode, and especially praised the jokes about Struthers, "It might be a good idea not to eat during the hilarious second episode. Enough said."
In 1998, Vern Perry, a reviewer with the Orange County Register, called "Starvin' Marvin" his favorite South Park episode. The "Starvin' Marvin" episode was featured in a 1998 Chicago Tribune list of the top ten reasons for the popularity of South Park. The Chicago Tribune also included "Starvin' Marvin" in a 2003 list of the top ten funniest episodes. Bill Ward, of the Star Tribune, described "Starvin' Marvin" as Cartman's "finest half-hour." Not all reviews were positive; Boston Globe writer Matthew Gilbert, who described South Park as immature and low-brow, called "Starvin' Marvin" a particularly "uncuddly episode". Brian Boyd of The Irish Times criticized the episode for making jokes at the expense of starving African children.
"Starvin' Marvin" was released, along with eleven other episodes, in a three-DVD set in November 1998. It was included in the third volume, which also included the episodes "Mecha-Streisand", "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo" and "Tom's Rhinoplasty". "Starvin' Marvin" was also one of six episodes included on a 1998 VHS called "South Park Festival Special", which included "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo", "Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson!", "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics", "Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery" and "Pinkeye". The episode, along with the other twelve from the first season, was also included in the DVD release "South Park: The Complete First Season", which was released on November 12, 2002. Parker and Stone recorded commentary tracks for each episode, but they were not included with the DVDs due to "standards" issues with some of the statements; Parker and Stone refused to allow the tracks to be edited and censored, so they were released in a CD separate from the DVDs. In 2008, Parker and Stone made "Starvin' Marvin" and all South Park episodes available to watch for free on the show's official website, "South Park Studios".
|
30,063,216 |
SMS Kaiserin
| 1,159,313,012 |
Battleship of the German Imperial Navy
|
[
"1911 ships",
"Kaiser-class battleships",
"Maritime incidents in 1919",
"Ships built in Kiel",
"World War I battleships of Germany",
"World War I warships scuttled at Scapa Flow"
] |
SMS Kaiserin was the third vessel of the Kaiser class of dreadnought battleships of the Imperial German Navy. Kaiserin's keel was laid in November 1910 at the Howaldtswerke dockyard in Kiel. She was launched on 11 November 1911 and was commissioned into the fleet on 14 May 1913. The ship was equipped with ten 30.5-centimeter (12 in) guns in five twin turrets, and had a top speed of 22.1 knots (40.9 km/h; 25.4 mph). Kaiserin was assigned to III Battle Squadron and later IV Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet for the majority of her career, including World War I.
Along with her four sister ships, Kaiser, Friedrich der Grosse, König Albert, and Prinzregent Luitpold, Kaiserin participated in all of the major fleet operations of World War I, including the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916. The ship was also involved in Operation Albion, an amphibious assault on the Russian-held islands in the Gulf of Riga, in October 1917. She later saw action during the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in November 1917.
After Germany's defeat in the war and the signing of the Armistice in November 1918, the Royal Navy interned Kaiserin and most of the capital ships of the High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow. The ships were disarmed and reduced to skeleton crews while the Allied powers negotiated the final version of the Treaty of Versailles. On 21 June 1919, the commander of the interned fleet, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, ordered the fleet to be scuttled to ensure that the British would not be able to seize the ships. Kaiserin was raised in May 1936 and subsequently broken up for scrap.
## Design
The ship was 172.40 m (565 ft 7 in) long overall and displaced a maximum of 27,000 metric tons (27,000 long tons) at full load. She had a beam of 29 m (95 ft 2 in) and a draft of 9.10 m (29 ft 10 in) forward and 8.80 m (28 ft 10 in) aft. Kaiserin was powered by three sets of Parsons steam turbines, each of which drove a single screw propeller; they were supplied with steam by sixteen coal-fired water-tube boilers. The powerplant produced a top speed of 22.1 knots (40.9 km/h; 25.4 mph). She carried 3,600 metric tons (3,500 long tons; 4,000 short tons) of coal, which enabled a maximum range of 7,900 nautical miles (14,600 km; 9,100 mi) at a cruising speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph).
Kaiserin was armed with a main battery of ten 30.5 cm SK L/50 guns in five twin turrets. The ship dispensed with the inefficient hexagonal turret arrangement of previous German battleships; instead, three of the five turrets were mounted on the centerline, with two of them arranged in a superfiring pair aft. The other two turrets were placed en echelon amidships, such that both could fire on the broadside. The ship was also armed with a secondary battery of fourteen 15 cm SK L/45 guns in casemates amidships. For close-range defense against torpedo boats, she carried eight 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/45 guns in casemates. The ship was also armed with four 8.8 cm L/45 anti-aircraft guns. The ship's armament was rounded out by five 50 cm (19.7 in) torpedo tubes, all mounted in the hull; one was in the bow, and the other four were on the broadside.
Her main armored belt was 350 mm (13.8 in) thick in the central citadel, and was composed of Krupp cemented armor (KCA). Her main battery gun turrets were protected by 300 mm (11.8 in) of KCA on the sides and faces. Kaiserin's conning tower was heavily armored, with 400 mm (15.7 in) sides.
## Service history
Ordered under the contract name Ersatz Hagen as a replacement for the obsolete coastal defense ship Hagen, Kaiserin was laid down at the Howaldtswerke dockyard in Kiel in November 1910. She was launched on 11 November 1911, after which fitting-out work was completed. At the launching ceremony, Admiral Hans von Koester gave a speech and Princess Victoria Louise christened the ship. A dockyard crew delivered the ship to the Navy on 13 May 1913; she was commissioned into the fleet the following day. During trials the ship's turbine engines were damaged, and Kaiserin did not join the fleet until 13 December 1913.
After joining III Battle Squadron in December 1913, Kaiserin participated in the routine fleet training exercises. Squadron exercises were conducted in February, followed by fleet maneuvers, both in the North Sea. The fleet trained again in May, in both the North and Baltic Seas. Kaiserin left Germany on 7 July for the annual summer cruise to Norway, but was recalled prematurely on 22 July because of rising international tensions following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Upon returning to Germany, Kaiserin steamed to Brunsbüttel on 24 July, where she was the first battleship to traverse the recently deepened Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. The voyage required lightening, and in just under twelve hours Kaiserin exited the locks at Holtenau in Kiel where she met the rest of her squadron. On 31 July, the entire squadron returned to the North Sea via the Canal. At midnight on 4 August, the United Kingdom, with its powerful Grand Fleet, declared war on Germany.
Kaiserin was present during the first sortie by the German fleet into the North Sea, which took place on 2–3 November 1914. No British forces were encountered during the operation. A second operation followed on 15–16 December. This sortie was the initiation of a strategy adopted by Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, the commander of the High Seas Fleet. Admiral Ingenohl intended to use the battlecruisers of Rear Admiral Franz von Hipper's I Scouting Group to raid British coastal towns to lure out portions of the Grand Fleet where they could be destroyed by the High Seas Fleet. Early on 15 December the fleet left port to raid the towns of Scarborough, Hartlepool, and Whitby. That evening, the German battle fleet of some twelve dreadnoughts—including Kaiserin and her four sisters—and eight pre-dreadnoughts came to within 10 nmi (19 km; 12 mi) of an isolated squadron of six British battleships. However, skirmishes between the rival destroyer screens in the darkness convinced Ingenohl that he was faced with the entire Grand Fleet. Under orders from Kaiser Wilhelm II to avoid risking the fleet unnecessarily, Ingenohl broke off the engagement and turned the battle fleet back toward Germany.
Kaiserin went into the Baltic for squadron training from 23 to 29 January 1915. Upon returning to the North Sea, the ship went into drydock in Wilhelmshaven for periodic maintenance, which lasted from 31 January to 20 February. The Kaiser removed Ingenohl from his post on 2 February, following the loss of SMS Blücher at the Battle of Dogger Bank the month before. Admiral Hugo von Pohl succeeded him as the commander of the fleet. Pohl continued the policy of sweeps into the North Sea to destroy isolated British formations. The fleet conducted a series of advances into the North Sea throughout 1915; Kaiserin was present for the sweeps on 17 to 18 May, 29 to 30 May, 10 August, 11 to 12 September, and 23 to 24 October. III Squadron completed the year with another round of unit training in the Baltic from 5 to 20 December.
Pohl's tenure as fleet commander was brief; by January 1916 hepatic cancer had weakened him to the point where he was no longer able to carry out his duties. He was replaced by Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer in January. Scheer proposed a more aggressive policy designed to force a confrontation with the British Grand Fleet; he received approval from the Kaiser in February. The first of Scheer's operations was conducted the following month, on 5 to 7 March, with an uneventful sweep of the Hoofden. Kaiserin was also present during an advance to the Amrun Bank on 2 to 3 April. The fleet conducted another sortie on 21 to 22 April.
### Battle of Jutland
Kaiserin was present during the fleet operation that resulted in the battle of Jutland which took place on 31 May and 1 June 1916; her commander at the time was Kapitän zur See (KzS) Karl Sievers. The German fleet again sought to draw out and isolate a portion of the Grand Fleet and destroy it before the main British fleet could retaliate. During the operation, Kaiserin was the second ship in VI Division of III Squadron and the seventh ship in the line, directly astern of Kaiser and ahead of Prinzregent Luitpold. VI Division was behind only V Division, consisting of the four König-class battleships. The eight battleships of the Helgoland- and Nassau classes assigned to I and II Divisions in I Squadron followed VI Division. The six elderly pre-dreadnoughts of III and IV Divisions, II Battle Squadron, formed the rear of the formation.
Shortly before 16:00, the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group encountered the British 1st Battlecruiser Squadron under the command of Vice Admiral David Beatty. The opposing ships began an artillery duel that saw the destruction of Indefatigable, shortly after 17:00, and Queen Mary, less than half an hour later. At 16:19, Kaiserin was forced to temporarily stop the turbine on the center shaft, as the condenser had started leaking. The crew were able to restart the engine before Kaiserin came into action. By this time, the German battlecruisers were steaming south to draw the British ships toward the main body of the High Seas Fleet. At 17:30, the crew of the leading German battleship, König, spotted both I Scouting Group and the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron approaching. The German battlecruisers were steaming to starboard, while the British ships steamed to port. At 17:45, Scheer ordered a two-point turn to port to bring his ships closer to the British battlecruisers, and a minute later, the order to open fire was given.
At approximately 17:40, the British light cruiser Nottingham fired a single torpedo at Kaiserin at the extreme range of at least 16,500 yd (15,100 m), which failed to find its target. After Scheer ordered the fleet to open fire, Kaiserin briefly engaged the battlecruiser New Zealand; Kaiserin failed to score a hit and by 17:54 New Zealand and the rest of the British battlecruisers had increased speed and moved out of range. The British destroyers Nestor and Nomad, which had been disabled earlier in the engagement, lay directly in the path of the advancing High Seas Fleet. Kaiserin and her three sisters fired on Nomad with their secondary guns while the I Squadron battleships dispatched Nestor. At around 19:00, the German battle line came into contact with the 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron; Kaiserin fired three salvos from her main battery at an unidentified four-funneled cruiser but made no hits.
Shortly after 19:00, a shell from the British battlecruiser Invincible disabled the German cruiser Wiesbaden; Rear Admiral Behncke in König attempted to maneuver III Squadron to cover the stricken cruiser. Simultaneously, the British 3rd and 4th Light Cruiser Squadrons began a torpedo attack on the German line; while advancing to torpedo range, they smothered Wiesbaden with fire from their main guns. The eight III Squadron battleships fired on the British cruisers, but even sustained fire from the battleships' main guns failed to drive off the British cruisers. The armored cruisers Defence, Warrior, and Black Prince joined in the attack on the crippled Wiesbaden. Between 19:14 and 19:17, several German battleships and battlecruisers opened fire on Defence and Warrior. Kaiserin initially engaged one of the battleships in the British 5th Battle Squadron and scored a hit; according to Kaiserin's logs, the ship in question was Malaya. After three minutes firing at Malaya, Kaiserin shifted fire to Defence. In short succession, the German dreadnoughts hit Defence with several heavy caliber shells. One salvo penetrated the ship's ammunition magazines and, in a tremendous explosion, destroyed the cruiser. After Defence exploded, Kaiserin shifted her fire to a target believed to be the battlecruiser Tiger. Heavy haze forced Kaiserin to check fire after two salvos.
By 20:00, Scheer ordered the German line to complete a 180-degree turn eastward to disengage from the British fleet. The maneuver, conducted under heavy fire, caused disorganization in the German fleet. Kaiserin had come too close to Prinzregent Luitpold and was forced to haul out of line to starboard to avoid a collision. The latter vessel came up alongside Kaiserin at high speed. As a result, Kaiserin had to remain out of line and could not return to her assigned position. The turn reversed the order of the German line; Kaiserin was now the seventh ship from the rear of the German line. At around 23:30, the German fleet reorganized into the night cruising formation. Kaiserin was the eleventh ship, in the center of the 24-ship line.
After a series of night engagements between the leading battleships and British destroyers, the High Seas Fleet punched through the British light forces and reached Horns Reef by 04:00 on 1 June. The German fleet reached Wilhelmshaven a few hours later; the I Squadron battleships took up defensive positions in the outer roadstead and Kaiserin, Kaiser, Prinzregent Luitpold, and Kronprinz stood ready just outside the entrance to Wilhelmshaven. The remainder of the battleships and battlecruisers entered Wilhelmshaven, where those that were still in fighting condition replenished their stocks of coal and ammunition. In the course of the battle, Kaiserin fired one-hundred and sixty 30.5 cm shells and one-hundred and thirty-five 15 cm rounds. She emerged from the battle completely unscathed.
### Subsequent operations
In early August, Kaiserin and the rest of the operational III Squadron units conducted divisional training in the Baltic. On 18 August, Scheer attempted a repeat of the 31 May operation; the two serviceable German battlecruisers—Moltke and Von der Tann—supported by three dreadnoughts, were to bombard the coastal town of Sunderland in an attempt to draw out and destroy Beatty's battlecruisers. The rest of the fleet, including Kaiserin, would trail behind and provide cover. On the approach to the English coast during the action of 19 August 1916, Scheer turned north after receiving a false report from a zeppelin about a British unit in the area. As a result, the bombardment was not carried out, and by 14:35, Scheer had been warned of the Grand Fleet's approach and so turned his forces around and retreated to German ports.
Another fleet advance followed on 18 to 20 October, though it ended without encountering any British units. Two weeks later, on 4 November, Kaiserin took part in an expedition to the western coast of Denmark to assist two U-boats, U-20 and U-30, that had become stranded there. The fleet was reorganized on 1 December; the four König-class battleships remained in III Squadron, along with the newly commissioned Bayern, while the five Kaiser-class ships, including Kaiserin, were transferred to IV Squadron. While transiting the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal on 14 March 1917, Kaiserin became grounded. One of her bilge keels was damaged and some 280 t (280 long tons; 310 short tons) of water entered the ship. Repairs were conducted at the Imperial Dockyard in Kiel from 15 to 18 March. Kaiserin returned to the North Sea on 30 March and remained there on guard duty until 8 June. On 9 June, she went to the Baltic for a month-long series of exercises, which were completed on 2 July. She resumed guard duties in the German Bight on 3 July and continued in this role until 11 September, when Kaiserin was detached to join the special unit assigned to Operation Albion.
### Operation Albion
In early September 1917, following the German conquest of the Russian port of Riga, the German navy decided to eliminate the Russian naval forces that still held the Gulf of Riga. The Admiralstab (the Navy High Command) planned an operation to seize the Baltic island of Ösel, and specifically the Russian gun batteries on the Sworbe Peninsula. On 18 September, the order was issued for a joint operation with the army to capture Ösel and Moon Islands; the primary naval component was to comprise the flagship, Moltke, along with III and IV Battle Squadrons of the High Seas Fleet. Along with nine light cruisers, three torpedo boat flotillas, and dozens of mine warfare ships, the entire force numbered some 300 ships, supported by over 100 aircraft and six zeppelins. The invasion force amounted to approximately 24,600 officers and enlisted men. By this time, IV Battle Squadron had come under the command of Vice Admiral Wilhelm Souchon. Opposing the Germans were the old Russian pre-dreadnoughts Slava and Tsesarevich, the armored cruisers Bayan, Admiral Makarov, and Diana, 26 destroyers, and several torpedo boats and gunboats. The garrison on Ösel numbered some 14,000 men.
The operation began on the morning of 12 October, when Moltke and the III Squadron ships engaged Russian positions in Tagga Bay while Kaiserin and the rest of IV Squadron shelled Russian gun batteries on the Sworbe Peninsula on Ösel. Kaiserin, along with Kaiser and Prinzregent Luitpold, were tasked with silencing the Russian guns at Hundsort on Ösel, which had taken Moltke under fire. The ships opened fire at 05:44, and by 07:45, Russian firing had ceased and German troops were moving ashore. Two days later, Souchon left Tagga Bay with Kaiserin, Friedrich der Grosse, and Prinzregent Luitpold to support German ground forces advancing on the Sworbe Peninsula. Kaiserin was assigned to suppress a Russian battery at Zerel, though heavy fog delayed her from engaging her target. The Russians opened fire first, which was quickly returned by Kaiserin and König Albert. Friedrich der Grosse came to the two ships' assistance; the three battleships fired a total of 120 large-caliber shells over the span of an hour. The fourth Russian salvo straddled Kaiserin, which began to steer erratically to avoid the Russian gunfire. The heavy firing prompted most of the Russian gun crews to flee their posts.
On the night of 15 October, Kaiserin and König Albert were sent to replenish their coal stocks in Putzig. On the 19th, they were briefly joined in Putzig by Friedrich der Grosse, which continued on to Arensburg with Moltke. The next morning, Vice Admiral Ehrhard Schmidt ordered the special naval unit to be dissolved and returned to the North Sea. In a communique to the naval headquarters, Schmidt noted that "Kaiserin and König Albert can immediately be detached from Putzig to the North Sea." The two ships then proceeded to Kiel via Danzig; after reaching Kiel, they transited the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal back to the North Sea.
### Final operations
On 17 November 1917, Kaiserin and Kaiser were assigned to provide cover for II Scouting Group while it conducted a minesweeping operation in the North Sea. Significant British forces, including five battlecruisers and several light cruisers, attacked II Scouting Group; the two battleships immediately steamed to their assistance. In the ensuing Second Battle of Heligoland Bight, Kaiserin scored a hit on the light cruiser Caledon. The battlecruiser Repulse briefly engaged the German dreadnoughts, but both forces withdrew. After the action, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter criticized Kaiserin's commander, KzS Kurt Graßhoff, for lagging too far behind the minesweepers to provide adequate protection. He was subsequently relieved of command of the ship. Kaiserin went into drydock for maintenance on 22 December, and work lasted until 5 February 1918. The ship participated in the fruitless advance to Norway on 23–25 April 1918, which had been intended to intercept a heavily defended convoy between Britain and Norway; faulty German intelligence prevented the Germans from catching the convoy. After returning to port, she resumed guard duties in the German Bight. IV Squadron undertook another training exercise in the Baltic from 18 June to 13 August. A final round of drills took place on 22–28 October.
### Fate
Kaiserin and her four sisters were to have taken part in a final fleet action at the end of October 1918, days before the Armistice was to take effect. The bulk of the High Seas Fleet was to have sortied from its base in Wilhelmshaven to engage the British Grand Fleet; Scheer—by now the Grand Admiral (Großadmiral) of the fleet—intended to inflict as much damage as possible on the British navy. The goal was to improve Germany's bargaining position in the imminent peace negotiations, despite the expected casualties. But many of the war-weary sailors felt that the operation would disrupt the peace process and prolong the war. On the morning of 29 October 1918, the order was given to sail from Wilhelmshaven the following day. Starting on the night of 29 October, sailors on Thüringen and then on several other battleships mutinied. The unrest ultimately forced Hipper and Scheer to cancel the operation. Informed of the situation, the Kaiser stated, "I no longer have a navy."
Following the capitulation of Germany in November 1918, the Allies interned most of the High Seas Fleet, under the command of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, in the British naval base in Scapa Flow. Prior to the departure of the German fleet, Admiral Adolf von Trotha made clear to Reuter that he could not allow the Allies to seize the ships, under any circumstances. The fleet rendezvoused with the British light cruiser Cardiff, which led the ships to the Allied fleet that was to escort the Germans to Scapa Flow. The massive fleet consisted of some 370 British, American, and French warships. Once the ships were interned, their guns were disabled through the removal of their breech blocks, and their crews were reduced to 200 officers and enlisted men.
The fleet remained in captivity during the negotiations that ultimately produced the Treaty of Versailles. Reuter believed that the British intended to seize the German ships on 21 June 1919, which was the deadline for Germany to have signed the peace treaty. Unaware that the deadline had been extended to the 23rd, Reuter ordered the ships to be sunk at the next opportunity. On the morning of 21 June, the British fleet left Scapa Flow to conduct training maneuvers, and at 11:20 Reuter transmitted the order to his ships. Kaiserin sank at 14:00; she was subsequently raised on 14 May 1936 and broken up later that year in Rosyth.
|
495,873 |
Gallimimus
| 1,170,050,066 |
Ornithomimid dinosaur genus from the Late Cretaceous Period
|
[
"Fossil taxa described in 1972",
"Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of Asia",
"Maastrichtian life",
"Nemegt fauna",
"Ornithomimids",
"Taxa named by Halszka Osmólska",
"Taxa named by Rinchen Barsbold"
] |
Gallimimus (/ˌɡælɪˈmaɪməs/ GAL-im-EYE-məs) is a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived in what is now Mongolia during the Late Cretaceous period, about seventy million years ago (mya). Several fossils in various stages of growth were discovered by Polish-Mongolian expeditions in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia during the 1960s; a large skeleton discovered in this region was made the holotype specimen of the new genus and species Gallimimus bullatus in 1972. The generic name means "chicken mimic", referring to the similarities between its neck vertebrae and those of the Galliformes. The specific name is derived from bulla, a golden capsule worn by Roman youth, in reference to a bulbous structure at the base of the skull of Gallimimus. At the time it was named, the fossils of Gallimimus represented the most complete and best preserved ornithomimid ("ostrich dinosaur") material yet discovered, and the genus remains one of the best known members of the group.
Gallimimus is the largest known ornithomimid; adults were about 6 metres (20 ft) long, 1.9 metres (6 ft 3 in) tall at the hip and weighed about 440–450 kilograms (970–990 lb). As evidenced by its relative Ornithomimus, it would have had feathers. The head was small and light with large eyes that faced to the sides. The snout was long compared to other ornithomimids, although it was broader and more rounded at the tip than in other species. Gallimimus was toothless with a keratinous (horny) beak, and had a delicate lower jaw. Many of the vertebrae had openings that indicate they were pneumatic (air-filled). The neck was proportionally long in relation to the trunk. The hands were proportionally the shortest of any ornithomimosaur and each had three digits with curved claws. The forelimbs were weak while the hindlimbs were proportionally long. The family Ornithomimidae is part of the group Ornithomimosauria. Anserimimus, also from Mongolia, is thought to have been the closest relative of Gallimimus.
As an ornithomimid, Gallimimus would have been a fleet (or cursorial) animal, using its speed to escape predators; its speed has been estimated at 42–56 km/h (29–34 mph). It may have had good vision and intelligence comparable to ratite birds. Gallimimus may have lived in groups, based on the discovery of several specimens preserved in a bone bed. Various theories have been proposed regarding the diet of Gallimimus and other ornithomimids. The highly mobile neck may have helped locate small prey on the ground, but it may also have been an opportunistic omnivore. It has also been suggested that it used small columnar structures in its beak for filter-feeding in water, though these structures may instead have been ridges used for feeding on tough plant material, indicative of a herbivorous diet. Gallimimus is the most commonly found ornithomimosaur in the Nemegt Formation, where it lived alongside its relatives Anserimimus and Deinocheirus. Gallimimus was featured in the movie Jurassic Park, in a scene that was important to the history of special effects, and in shaping the common conception of dinosaurs as bird-like animals.
## History of discovery
Between 1963 and 1965, the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences organised the Polish-Mongolian palaeontological expeditions to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. Among the dinosaur remains discovered in sand beds of the Nemegt Basin were numerous ornithomimids at different growth stages from the Nemegt, Tsaagan Khushuu, Altan Ula IV and Naran Bulak localities. Three partially complete skeletons, two with skulls, as well as many fragmentary remains, were collected. The largest skeleton (later to become the holotype of Gallimimus bullatus) was discovered by palaeontologist Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska in Tsaagan Khushuu in 1964; it was preserved lying on its back, and the skull was found under its pelvis. One small specimen was also found in Tsaagan Khushuu the same year, and another small specimen was found in the Nemegt locality. A small skeleton without forelimbs was discovered in 1967 by the Mongolian palaeontological expedition in Bugeen Tsav outside the Nemegt Basin. The fossils were housed at the Mongolian, Polish and USSR Academy of Sciences. The Polish-Mongolian expeditions were notable for being led by women, some of whom were among the first women to name new dinosaurs. The fossils discovered in these expeditions shed new light on the interchange of fauna between Asia and North America during the Cretaceous period. Some of the skeletons were exhibited in Warsaw in 1968, mounted in tall, semi-erect postures, which was accepted at the time, though more horizontal postures are favoured today.
In 1972, palaeontologists Halszka Osmólska, Ewa Roniewicz and Rinchen Barsbold named the new genus and species Gallimimus bullatus, using the largest collected skeleton, specimen IGM 100/11 (from Tsaagan Khushuu, formerly referred to as G.I.No.DPS 100/11 and MPD 100/11), as the holotype. The generic name is derived from the Latin gallus, "chicken", and the Greek mimos, "mimic", in reference to the front part of the neck vertebrae which resembled those of the Galliformes. The specific name is derived from the Latin bulla, a gold capsule worn by Roman youth around the neck, in reference to the bulbous capsule on the parasphenoid at the base of the dinosaur's skull. Such a feature had not been described from other reptiles at the time, and was considered unusual. The holotype consists of an almost complete skeleton with a distorted snout, incomplete lower jaw, vertebral series, pelvis, as well as some missing hand and foot bones.
The other partially complete skeletons were juveniles; ZPAL MgD-I/1 (from Tsaagan Khushuu) has a crushed skull with a missing tip, damaged vertebrae, fragmented ribs, pectoral girdle and forelimbs, and an incomplete left hind limb, ZPAL MgD-I/94 (from the Nemegt locality) lacks the skull, atlas, tip of the tail, pectoral girdle and forelimbs, while the smallest specimen, IGM 100/10 (from Bugeen Tsav), lacks a pectoral girdle, forelimbs and several vertebrae and ribs. Osmólska and colleagues listed twenty-five known specimens in all, nine of which were only represented by single bones.
At the time it was named, the fossils of Gallimimus represented the most complete and best preserved ornithomimid material yet discovered, and the genus remains one of the best known members of the group. Ornithomimids were previously known mainly from North America, Archaeornithomimus being the only prior known member from Asia (though without a skull). Since the first discoveries, more specimens have been found by further Mongolian-led international expeditions. Three of the Gallimimus skeletons (including the holotype) later became part of a travelling exhibit of Mongolian dinosaur fossils, which toured various countries.
Fossil poaching has become a serious problem in Mongolia in the 21st century, and several Gallimimus specimens have been looted. In 2017, Hang-Jae Lee and colleagues reported a fossil trackway discovered in 2009 associated with a clenched Gallimimus foot (specimen MPC-D100F/17). The rest of the skeleton appeared to have been removed previously by poachers, along with several other Gallimimus specimens (as indicated by empty excavation pits, garbage, and scattered broken bones in the quarry). It is unusual to find tracks closely associated with body fossils; some of the tracks are consistent with ornithomimid feet, while others belong to different dinosaurs. In 2014, a slab with two Gallimimus specimens was repatriated to Mongolia along with other dinosaur skeletons, after having been smuggled to the US.
In 1988, the palaeontologist Gregory S. Paul concluded that the skulls of ornithomimids were more similar to each other than previously thought and moved most species into the same genus, Ornithomimus, resulting in the new combination O. bullatus. In 2010, he instead listed it as "Gallimimus (or Struthiomimus) bullatus", but returned to using only the genus name Gallimimus in 2016. The species involved have generally been kept in separate genera by other writers. An ornithomimid vertebra from Japan informally named "Sanchusaurus" was reported in a 1988 magazine, but was assigned to Gallimimus sp. (of uncertain species) by the palaeontologist Dong Zhiming and colleagues in 1990. In 2000, the palaeontologist Philip J. Currie proposed that Anserimimus, which is only known from one skeleton from Mongolia, was a junior synonym of Gallimimus, but this was dismissed by Kobayashi and Barsbold, who pointed out several differences between the two. Barsbold noted some morphological variation among newer Gallimimus specimens, though this has never been published. Barsbold informally referred to a nearly complete skeleton (IGM 100/14) as "Gallimimus mongoliensis", but since it differs from Gallimimus in some details, Yoshitsugu Kobayashi and Barsbold proposed in 2006 that it probably belongs to a different genus.
## Description
Gallimimus is the largest known member of the family Ornithomimidae. The adult holotype (specimen IGM 100/11) was about 6 metres (20 ft) long and 1.9 metres (6.2 ft) tall at the hip; its skull was 330 millimetres (1.08 ft) long and the femur (thigh bone) was 660 millimetres (2.17 ft). It would have weighed about 440–450 kilograms (970–990 lb). In comparison, one juvenile specimen (ZPAL MgD-I/94) was about 2.15 metres (7.1 ft) long, 0.79 metres (2.6 ft) tall at the hip, and weighed about 26 kilograms (57 lb). Based on fossils of the related Ornithomimus, it is known that ornithomimosaurs ("ostrich dinosaurs") were feathered, and that the adults bore wing-like structures as evidenced by the presence of quill-knobs on the ulna bone of the lower arm, bumps that indicate where feathers would have attached.
### Skull
The head of Gallimimus was very small and light compared to the vertebral column. Due to the length of its snout, the skull was long compared to other ornithomimids, and the snout had a gently convex sloping upper profile. The side profile of the snout differed from other ornithomimids in not narrowing towards its front half, and the lower front margin of the premaxilla at the front of the upper jaw rose upwards, instead of being horizontal. Seen from above, the snout was almost spatulate (spoon-shaped), broad and rounded at the tip (or U-shaped), whereas it was acute (or V-shaped) in North American ornithomimids. The orbits (eye sockets) were large and faced sideways, as in other ornithomimids. The temporal region at the side of the skull behind the eyes was deep, and the infratemporal fenestra (the lower opening behind the orbit) was nearly triangular and smaller than that of the related Struthiomimus. It had deep muscle scars at the back part of the skull roof, along the parietal bone. The parasphenoid (a bone of the braincase, at the underside of the skull's base) was thin-walled, hollow and formed a pear-shaped, bulbous structure. The structure had a shallow furrow which opened towards the front. The internal nares (internal openings for the nasal passage) were large and placed far back on the palate, due to the presence of an extensive secondary palate, which was common to ornithomimids.
The delicate lower jaw, consisting of thin bones, was slender and shallow at the front, deepening towards the rear. The front of the mandible was shovel-like, resulting in a gap between the tips of the jaws when shut. The shovel-like shape was similar to that of the common seagull, and the lower beak may have had a shape similar to that of this bird. The retroarticular process at the back of the jaw (where jaw muscles attached that opened the beak) was well developed and consisted mainly of the angular bone. The surangular was the largest bone of the lower jaw, which is usual in theropods. The mandibular fenestra, a sidewards-facing opening in the lower jaw, was elongated and comparatively small. The lower jaw did not have a coronoid process or a supradentary bone, the lack of which is a common feature of beaked theropods (ornithomimosaurs, oviraptorosaurs, therizinosaurs and birds), but unusual among theropods in general. The jaws of Gallimimus were edentulous (toothless), and the front part would have been covered in a keratinous rhamphotheca (horny beak) in life. The beak may have covered a smaller area than in North American relatives, based on the lack of nourishing foramina on the maxilla. The inner side of the beak had small, tightly packed and evenly spaced columnar structures (their exact nature is debated), which were longest at the front and shortening towards the back.
### Postcranial skeleton
Gallimimus had 64–66 vertebrae in its spine, fewer than other ornithomimids. The centra (or bodies) of the vertebrae were platycoelous, with a flat front surface and a concave hind surface, except for the first six caudal (tail) vertebra–where the hind surface was also flat–and those at the end of the tail–which were amphiplatyan with both surfaces flat. Many of the centra had foramina (openings which have also been called "pleurocoels"), and were therefore probably pneumatic (with their hollow chambers invaded by air sacs). The neck consisted of 10 cervical vertebrae, which were all long and wide, except for the atlas bone (the first vertebra that connects with the back of the skull). The atlas differed from that of other ornithomimids in that the front surface of its intercentrum was slanted downwards towards the back, instead of being concave and facing upwards to support the occipital condyle. The neck appears to have been proportionally longer in relation to the trunk than in other ornithomimids. The neck was divided into two distinct sections: the cervical vertebrae at the front had centra which were nearly triangular in side view and tapered towards the back, as well as low neural arches and short, broad zygapophyses (the processes that articulated between the vertebrae); the cervical vertebrae at the back had spool-like centra which became gradually higher, and long, thin zygapophyses. The pneumatic foramina here were small and oval, and the neural spines projecting outwards from the centra formed long, low and sharp ridges, except for in the hindmost cervical vertebrae.
The back of Gallimimus had 13 dorsal vertebrae, with spool-like centra that were short, but tended to become deeper and longer towards the back. Their transverse processes (processes articulating with the ribs) slightly increased in length towards the back. The two first dorsal centra had deep pneumatic foramina, while the rest only had shallow fossae (depressions), and the neural spines were prominent being somewhat triangular or rectangular in shape. The sacrum (fused vertebrae between the pelvic bones) consisted of five sacral vertebrae which were about equal in length. The centra here were spool-like, flattened sideways and had fossae which appear to have continued as deep foramina in some specimens. The neural spines here were rectangular, broad, and higher than those in the dorsal vertebrae. They were higher or equal in height to the upper margin of the iliac blade and were separate, whereas in other ornithomimids they were fused together. The tail had 36–39 caudal vertebrae with the centra of those at the front being spool-shaped, while those at the back were nearly triangular, and elongated across. The neural spines here were high and flat, but diminished backwards, where they became ridge-like. The only sign of pneumaticity in the tail were deep fossae between the neural spines and the transverse process of the two first caudal vertebrae. All the vertebrae in front of the sacrum bore ribs except for the atlas and the last dorsal vertebra.
The scapula (shoulder blade) was short and curved, thin at the front end, and thick at the back. It was connected relatively weakly with the coracoid, which was large and deep from top to bottom. Overall, the forelimbs did not differ much from those of other ornithomimids, all of which were comparatively weak. The humerus (upper arm bone), which had a near circular cross-section, was long and twisted. The deltopectoral crest on the upper front part of the humerus was comparatively small, and therefore provided little surface for attachment of upper arm muscles. The ulna was slender, long and weakly curved, with a nearly triangular shaft. The olecranon (the projection from the elbow) was prominent in adults, but not well developed in juveniles. The radius (the other bone in the lower arm) was long and slender with a more expanded upper end compared to the lower. The manus (hand) was proportionally short compared to those of other ornithomimosaurs, having the smallest manus to humerus length ratio of any member of the group, but was otherwise similar in structure. It had three fingers, which were similarly developed; the first (the "thumb") was the strongest, the third was the weakest and the second was the longest. The unguals (claw bones) were strong, somewhat curved (that of the first finger was most curved) and compressed sideways with a deep groove on each side. The unguals were similarly developed, though the third was slightly smaller.
The pubis (pubic bone) was long and slender, ending in a pubic boot which expanded to the front and back, a general feature of ornithomimosaurs. The hind limbs differed little from those of other ornithomimids, and were proportionally longer than in other theropods. The femur was nearly straight, long and slender, with a sideways flattened shaft. The tibia was straight, long, with two well developed condyles (rounded end of a bone) on the upper end and a flattened lower end. The fibula of the lower leg was flat, thin and broad at the upper end narrowing towards the lower end. The lower half of the third metatarsal was broad when viewed end on, partly covering the adjoining two metatarsals to each side, but narrowed abruptly at mid-length, wedging between those bones and disappearing (an arctometatarsalian foot structure). The third toe was proportionally shorter in relation to the limb than in other ornithomimids. As in other ornithomimids, the foot had no hallux (or dewclaw, the first toe of most other theropods). The unguals of the toes were flat on their lower sides; the outer two declined slightly outwards from their digits.
## Classification
Osmólska and colleagues assigned Gallimimus to the family Ornithomimidae in 1972, with the North American Struthiomimus as the closest relative, while lamenting the fact that comparison between taxa was difficult because other ornithomimids known at the time were either poorly preserved or inadequately described. In 1975, Kielan-Jaworowska stated that though many dinosaurs from Asia were placed in the same families as North American relatives, this category of classification tended to be more inclusive than was used for modern birds. She highlighted that while Gallimimus had a rounded beak (similar to a goose or duck), North American ornithomimids had pointed beaks, a difference that would otherwise lead taxonomists to place modern birds in different families. In 1976, Barsbold placed Ornithomimidae in the new group Ornithomimosauria. In 2003, Kobayashi and Jun-Chang Lü found that Anserimimus was the sister taxon to Gallimimus, both forming a derived (or "advanced") clade with North American genera, which was confirmed by Kobayashi and Barsbold in 2006.
The following cladogram shows the placement of Gallimimus among Ornithomimidae according to Li Xu and colleagues, 2011:
Ornithomimosaurs belonged to the clade Maniraptoriformes of coelurosaurian theropods, which also includes modern birds. Early ornithomimosaurs had teeth, which were lost in more derived members of the group. In 2004, Makovicky, Kobayashi, and Currie suggested that most of the early evolutionary history of ornithomimosaurs took place in Asia, where most genera have been discovered, including the most basal (or "primitive") taxa, although they acknowledged that the presence of the basal Pelecanimimus in Europe presents a complication in classification. The group must have dispersed once or twice from Asia to North America across Beringia to account for the Late Cretaceous genera found there. As seen in some other dinosaur groups, ornithomimosaurs were largely restricted to Asia and North America after Europe was separated from Asia by the Turgai Strait.
In 1994, the palaeontologist Thomas R. Holtz grouped ornithomimosaurs and troodontids in a clade, based on shared features such as the presence of a bulbous capsule on the parasphenoid. He named the clade Bullatosauria, based on the specific name of Gallimimus bullatus, which was also in reference to the capsule. In 1998, Holtz instead found that troodontids were basal maniraptorans, meaning that all members of that clade would fall within Bullatosauria, which would therefore become a junior synonym of Maniraptoriformes, and the clade has since fallen out of use.
## Palaeobiology
The cervical vertebrae of Gallimimus indicate that it held its neck obliquely, declining upwards at an angle of 35 degrees. Osmólska and colleagues found that the hands of Gallimimus were not prehensile (or capable of grasping), and that the thumb was not opposable. They also suggested that the arms were weak compared to, for example, those of the ornithomimosaur Deinocheirus. They agreed with the interpretations of ornithomimid biology by palaeontologist Dale Russell from earlier in 1972, including that they would have been very fleet (or cursorial) animals, although less agile than large, modern ground birds, and would have used their speed to escape predators. Russell also suggested that they had a good sense of vision and intelligence comparable to that of modern ratite birds. Since their predators may have had colour vision, he suggested it would have influenced their colouration, perhaps resulting in camouflage. In 1982, palaeontologist Richard A. Thulborn estimated that Gallimimus could have run at speeds of 42–56 km/h (29–34 mph). He found that ornithimimids would not have been as fast as ostriches, which can reach 70–80 km/h (43–49 mph), in part due to their arms and tails increasing their weight.
In 1988, Paul suggested that the eyeballs of ornithomimids were flattened and had minimal mobility within the sockets, necessitating movement of the head to view objects. Since their eyes faced more sideways than in some other bird-like theropods, their binocular vision would have been more limited, which is an adaptation in some animals that improves their ability to see predators behind them. Paul considered the relatively short tails, which reduced weight, and missing halluxes of ornithomimids to be adaptations for speed. He suggested that they could have defended themselves by pecking and kicking, but would have mainly relied on their speed for escape. In 2015, Akinobu Watanabe and colleagues found that together with Deinocheirus and Archaeornithomimus, Gallimimus had the most pneumatised skeleton among ornithomimosaurs. Pneumatisation is thought to be advantageous for flight in modern birds, but its function in non-avian dinosaurs is not known with certainty. It has been proposed that pneumatisation was used to reduce the mass of large bones, that it was related to high metabolism, balance during locomotion, or used for thermoregulation.
In 2017, Lee and colleagues suggested various possible taphonomic circumstances (changes during decay and fossilisation) to explain how the Gallimimus foot discovered in 2009 was associated with a trackway. The trackway is preserved in sandstone while the foot is preserved in mudstone, extending 20 centimetres (7.9 in) below the layer with the tracks. It is possible the fossil represents an animal that died in its tracks, but the depth of the foot in the mud may be too shallow for it to have become mired. It may also have been killed by a flood, after which it was buried in a pond. However, the layers of mud and sand do not indicate flooding but probably a dry environment, and the disrupted sediments around the fossil indicate the animal was alive when it came to the area. The authors thus suggested that the tracks had been made over an extended amount of time and period of drying, and that probably none of them were produced by the individual that owned the foot. The animal may have walked across the floor of a pond, breaking through the sediment layer with the tracks while it was soaked from rain or contained water. The animal may have died in this position from thirst, hunger, or another reason, and mud then deposited on the sand, thereby covering and preserving the tracks and the carcass. The foot may have become clenched and disarticulated as it decomposed, which made the tendons flex, and was later stepped on by heavy dinosaurs. The area may have been a single bone bed (based on the possible number of poached specimens) representing a Gallimimus mass mortality, perhaps due to a drought or famine. The fact that the animals seem to have died at the same time (the empty excavation pits were stratigraphically identical) may indicate that Gallimimus was gregarious (lived in groups), which has also been suggested for other ornithomimids.
### Feeding and diet
Osmólska and colleagues pointed out that the front part of the neck of Gallimimus would have been very mobile (the hind part was more rigid), the neural arches in the vertebrae of that region being similar to chicken and other Galliformes, indicating similar feeding habits. They found the beak of Gallimimus similar to that of a duck or goose, and that it would have fed on small, living prey which it swallowed whole. The mobility of the neck would have been useful in locating prey on the ground, since the eyes were positioned on the sides of the skull. They assumed that all ornithomimids had similar feeding habits, and pointed out that Russel had compared the beaks of ornithomimids with those of insectivorous birds. Osmólska and colleagues suggested that Gallimimus was capable of cranial kinesis (due to the seemingly loose connection between some of the bones at the back of the skull), a feature which allows individual bones of the skull to move in relation to each other. They also proposed that it did not use its short handed forelimbs for bringing food to the mouth, but for raking or digging in the ground to access food. The hands of Gallimimus may have been weaker than for example those of Struthiomimus, which may instead have used its hands for hooking and gripping, according to a 1985 article by palaeontologists Elizabeth L. Nicholls and Anthony P. Russell.
In 1988 Paul disagreed that ornithomimids were omnivores that ate small animals and eggs as well as plants, as had previously been suggested. He pointed out that ostriches and emus are mainly grazers and browsers, and that the skulls of ornithomimids were most similar to those of the extinct moas, which were strong enough to bite off twigs, as evidenced by their gut content. He further suggested that ornithomimids were well adapted for browsing on tough plants and would have used their hands to bring branches within reach of their jaws. Palaeontologist Jørn Hurum suggested in 2001 that due to its similar jaw structure, Gallimimus may have had an opportunistic, omnivorous diet like seagulls. He also observed that the tight intramandibular joint would prevent any movement between the front and rear portions of the lower jaw.
In 2001, palaeontologists Mark A. Norell, Makovicky, and Currie reported a Gallimimus skull (IGM 100/1133) and an Ornithomimus skull that preserved soft tissue structures on the beak. The inner side of the Gallimimus beak had columnar structures that the authors found similar to the lamellae in the beaks of anseriform birds, which use these for manipulating food, straining sediments, filter-feeding by segregating food items from other material, and for cutting plants while grazing. They found the Northern shoveller, which feeds on plants, molluscs, ostracods, and foraminiferans, to be the modern anseriform with structures most similar in anatomy to those of Gallimimus. The authors noted that ornithomimids probably did not use their beaks to prey on large animals and were abundant in mesic environments, while rarer in more arid environments, suggesting that they may have depended on aquatic food sources. Makovicky, Kobayashi, and Currie pointed out that if this interpretation is correct, Gallimimus would have been one of the largest known terrestrial filter feeders.
In 2005, palaeontologist Paul Barrett pointed out that the lamella-like structures of Gallimimus did not appear to have been flexible bristles like those of filter-feeding birds (as there is no indication of these structures overlapping or being collapsed), but were instead more akin to the thin, regularly spaced vertical ridges in the beaks of turtles and hadrosaurid dinosaurs. In these animals, such ridges are thought to be associated with herbivorous diets, used to crop tough vegetation. Barrett suggested that the ridges in the beak of Gallimimus represented a natural cast of the internal surface of the beak, indicating that the animal was a herbivore that fed on material high in fibre. The discovery of many gastroliths (gizzard stones) in some ornithomimids indicate the presence of a gastric mill, and therefore point towards a herbivorous diet, as these are used to grind food of animals that lack the necessary chewing apparatus. Barrett also calculated that a 440 kilograms (970 lb) Gallimimus would have needed between 0.07 and 3.34 kilograms (0.15 and 7.36 lb) of food per day, depending on whether it had an endothermic or an ectothermic ("warm" or "cold"-blooded) metabolism, an intake which he found to be unfeasible if it was a filter feeder. He also found that ornithomimids were abundant not only in formations that represented mesic environments, but also in arid environments where there would be insufficient water to sustain a diet based on filter-feeding. In 2007, palaeontologist Espen M. Knutsen wrote that the beak shape of ornithomimids, when compared to those of modern birds, was consistent with omnivory or high-fibre herbivory.
David J. Button and Zanno found in 2019 herbivorous dinosaurs mainly followed two distinct modes of feeding, either processing food in the gut—characterized by gracile skulls and low bite forces—or the mouth, characterized by features associated with extensive processing. Ornithomimid ornithomimosaurs, Deinocheirus, diplodocoid and titanosaur sauropods, Segnosaurus, and caenagnathids, were found to be in the former category. These researchers suggested that ornithomimid ornithomimosaurians such as Gallimimus and deinocheirids had invaded these niches separately, convergently achieving relatively large sizes. Advantages from large body mass in herbivores include increased intake rate of food and fasting resistance, and these trends may therefore indicate that ornithomimids and deinocheirids were more herbivorous than other ornithomimosaurians. They cautioned that the correlations between herbivory and body mass were not simple, and that there was no directional trend towards increased mass seen in the clade. Furthermore, the diet of most ornithomimosaurians is poorly known.
### Development
The shape and proportions of the skull changed significantly during growth. The rear of the skull and the orbits decreased in size, whereas the snout became relatively longer; similar changes occur in modern crocodiles. The skull was also proportionally larger in the younger specimens, and the sloping of the snout's upper profile was less distinct. The ribs in the neck were fused to the vertebrae only in adults. The forelimbs appear to have become proportionally longer during growth, whereas the proportional length of the bones in the hind limbs changed very little. In 2012, palaeontologist Darla K. Zelenitsky and colleagues concluded that, since adult ornithomimosaurs had wing-like structures on their arms whereas juveniles did not (as evidenced by specimens of Ornithomimus), these structures were originally secondary sexual characteristics, which could have been used for reproductive behaviour such as courtship, display, and brooding.
A 1987 study by the biologists Roman Pawlicki and P. Bolechała showed age-related differences in the content of calcium and phosphorus (important components in the formation of bone) of Gallimimus specimens. They found that the ratio was highest in young to middle aged animals, decreasing with age. In 1991, they reported that the bones of old individuals contained the highest amounts of lead and iron, while those in younger animals were lower. A study of the bone histology of various dinosaurs in 2000, by biologists John M. Rensberger and Mahito Watabe, revealed that the canaliculi (channels which connect bone cells) and collagen fibre bundles of Gallimimus and other ornithomimids were more akin to those in birds than mammals, unlike those of ornithischian dinosaurs, which were more similar to mammals. These differences may have been related to the process and rate at which bone formed.
## Palaeoenvironment
Gallimimus is known from the Nemegt Formation in the Gobi Desert of southern Mongolia. This geologic formation has never been dated radiometrically, but the fauna present in the fossil record indicate it was probably deposited during the early Maastrichtian stage, at the end of the Late Cretaceous about 70 million years ago. The sediments of the Gallimimus type locality Tsaagan Khushuu consist of silts, siltstones, mudstones, sands, as well as less frequent thin beds of sandstones. The rock facies of the Nemegt Formation suggest the presence of river channels, mudflats, shallow lakes and floodplains in an environment similar to the Okavango Delta of present-day Botswana. Large river channels and soil deposits are evidence of a significantly more humid climate than those found in the older Barun Goyot and Djadochta formations, although caliche deposits indicate that periodic droughts occurred. Fossil bones from the Nemegt Basin, including of Gallimimus, are more radioactive than fossils from surrounding areas, possibly because uranium accumulated in the bones, transported there by percolating ground water.
The Nemegt rivers, where Gallimimus lived, were home to a wide array of organisms. Occasional mollusc fossils, as well as a variety of other aquatic animals like fish, turtles, and crocodylomorphs, including Shamosuchus, have been discovered in this region. Mammal fossils are rare in the Nemegt Formation, but many birds, including the enantiornithine Gurilynia, the hesperornithiform Judinornis, as well as Teviornis, a possible anseriform, have been found. Herbivorous dinosaurs discovered in the Nemegt Formation include ankylosaurids such as Tarchia, the pachycephalosaurian Prenocephale, large hadrosaurids such as Saurolophus and Barsboldia, and sauropods such as Nemegtosaurus and Opisthocoelicaudia. Predatory theropods that lived alongside Gallimimus include tyrannosauroids such as Tarbosaurus, Alioramus and Bagaraatan, and troodontids such as Borogovia, Tochisaurus and Zanabazar. Herbivorous or omnivorous theropods include therizinosaurs, such as Therizinosaurus, as well as oviraptorosaurians, such as Elmisaurus, Nemegtomaia, and Rinchenia. Other ornithomimosaurs, including Anserimimus and Deinocheirus, are also found, but Gallimimus is the most common member of the group in the Nemegt.
## Cultural significance
Gallimimus was featured in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park by director Steven Spielberg; a similar scene in the original 1990 novel instead featured hadrosaurs. Spielberg had wanted a stampede sequence with animal herds in the movie, but did not know how to achieve it, and it was initially going to be visualised through stop-motion animation. At the time, there was little faith in creating animals through computer animation, but the visual effects company Industrial Light and Magic was given a go-ahead by the movie's producers to explore possibilities. ILM created a Gallimimus skeleton in the computer and animated a test showing a herd of running skeletons, and later a Tyrannosaurus chasing a fully rendered Gallimimus herd. The production team became very enthusiastic as nothing similar had previously been achieved, and Spielberg was convinced to write the scene into the script, and to also use computer graphics for other dinosaur shots in the movie instead of stop motion. The Gallimimus were animated by tracing frames from footage of ostriches, and footage of herding gazelles was also referenced. Kielan-Jaworowska, who discovered the holotype specimen, called it a "beautiful scene". The movie's dinosaurs were one of the most widely publicised applications of computer-generated imagery in film, and were considered more lifelike than what had been previously accomplished with special effects.
Emphasising the bird-like flocking behaviour of the Gallimimus herd was a point in Jurassic Park'''s story, as they were supposed to represent the precursors to birds. The herd was shown moving as a whole, rather than individual animals running around, and the smaller Gallimimus were shown in the middle of the group, as though they were being protected. During the scene, the palaeontologist Alan Grant says that the herd moves with "uniform direction changes, just like a flock of birds evading a predator" as he watches the movements of the fast, graceful Gallimimus. This contrasted with how dinosaurs were traditionally depicted in mass media as lumbering, tail-dragging animals, and the movie helped change the common perception of dinosaurs. This and other scenes reflected then-recent theories of bird evolution encouraged by the movie's scientific advisor, the palaeontologist John R. Horner, ideas which were still contentious at the time. Despite such theories, Gallimimus and other dinosaurs of the movie were depicted without feathers, in part because it was unknown at the time how widespread these were among the group.
It has been claimed that the Lark Quarry tracks (one of the world's largest concentrations of dinosaur tracks) in Queensland, Australia, served as inspiration and "scientific underpinning" for the Gallimimus stampede scene in Jurassic Park; these tracks were initially interpreted as representing a dinosaur stampede caused by the arrival of a theropod predator. The idea that the tracks represent a stampede has since been contested (the "theropod" may instead have been a herbivore similar to Muttaburrasaurus), and a consultant to Jurassic Park'' has denied the tracks served as inspiration for the movie.
## See also
- Timeline of ornithomimosaur research
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The Goldfinch (painting)
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Painting by Carel Fabritius
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The Goldfinch (Dutch: Het puttertje) is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age artist Carel Fabritius of a life-sized chained goldfinch. Signed and dated 1654, it is now in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands. The work is a trompe-l'œil oil on panel measuring 33.5 by 22.8 centimetres (13.2 in × 9.0 in) that was once part of a larger structure, perhaps a window jamb or a protective cover. It is possible that the painting was in its creator's workshop in Delft at the time of the gunpowder explosion that killed him and destroyed much of the city.
A common and colourful bird with a pleasant song, the goldfinch was a popular pet, and could be taught simple tricks including lifting a thimble-sized bucket of water. It was reputedly a bringer of good health, and was used in Italian Renaissance painting as a symbol of Christian redemption and the Passion of Jesus.
The Goldfinch is unusual for the Dutch Golden Age painting period in the simplicity of its composition and use of illusionary techniques. Following the death of its creator, it was lost for more than two centuries before its rediscovery in Brussels.
## Description
The Goldfinch is an oil painting on panel measuring 33.5 by 22.8 centimetres (13.2 in × 9.0 in), now in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands. Details of its physical structure emerged when it was restored in 2003. Because the lead-based paint limited the effectiveness of traditional X-rays and infrared, chief conservator Jorgen Wadum used a CT scanner to digitally eliminate the paint layer and see what was underneath. The panel on which it is painted is 8–10 millimetres (0.31–0.39 in) thick, which is atypically deep for a small painting, and indicates that it may have formerly been part of a larger piece of wood. Evidence for this is the remains of a wooden pin, suggesting the original boards had been joined with dowels and glue. Before it was framed, the painting had a 2-centimetre (0.79 in) black border onto which a gilded frame was later fixed with ten equally spaced nails. The nails did not reach the back of the panel so there is no evidence of a backing to the picture. The frame was subsequently removed leaving only a residual line of a greenish copper compound. Fabritius then extended the white background pigment to the right edge, repainted his signature, and added the lower perch. Finally, the remaining black edges were overpainted with white.
The back of the panel has four nail holes and six other holes near the top, suggesting two different methods of suspension of the panel at various times. The art historian Linda Stone-Ferrier has suggested that the panel may have been either attached to the inner jamb of a window or have been a hinged protective cover for another wall-mounted painting.
During conservation, it was realised that the surface of the painting had numerous small dents that must have been formed when the paint was still not fully dried, since there was no cracking. It is possible that the slight damage was caused by the explosion that killed its creator. The restoration removed the old yellow varnish and showed the original tones, described by the art critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger in 1859 as mur blême and lumineuse couleur ("pale wall" and "bright colour").
## The subject
The painting shows a life-size European goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) on top of a feeder—a blue container with a lid, enclosed by two wooden half-rings fixed to the wall. The bird is perched on the upper ring, to which its leg is attached by a fine chain. The painting is signed and dated "C fabritivs 1654" at the bottom.
The goldfinch is a widespread and common seed-eating bird in Europe, North Africa, and western and central Asia. As a colourful species with a pleasant twittering song, and an associated belief that it brought health and good fortune, it had been domesticated for at least 2,000 years. Pliny recorded that it could be taught to do tricks, and in the 17th century, it became fashionable to train goldfinches to draw water from a bowl with a miniature bucket on a chain. The Dutch title of the painting is the bird's nickname puttertje, which refers to this custom and is a diminutive equivalent to "draw-water", an old Norfolk name for the bird.
The goldfinch frequently appears in paintings, not just for its colourful appearance but also for its symbolic meanings. Pliny associated the bird with fertility, and the presence of a giant goldfinch next to a naked couple in The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych by the earlier Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch perhaps refers to this belief.
Nearly 500 Renaissance religious paintings, mainly by Italian artists, show the bird, including Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna Litta (1490–1491), Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch (1506) and Piero della Francesca's Nativity (1470–1475) In Medieval Christianity, the goldfinch's association with health symbolises the Redemption, and its habit of feeding on the seeds of spiky thistles, together with its red face, presaged the crucifixion of Jesus, where the bird supposedly became splattered with blood while attempting to remove the crown of thorns. Many of these devotional paintings were created in the middle of the fourteenth century while the Black Death pandemic gripped Europe.
The symbolism persisted long after the time of Fabritius. A much later example of the goldfinch as a symbol of redemption is Hogarth’s 1742 painting The Graham Children. Thomas, the youngest, had died by the time the painting was completed.
### The goldfinch in art
## Style
The Goldfinch is a trompe-l'œil painting which uses artistic techniques to create the illusion of depth, notably through foreshortening of the head, but also by highlights on the rings and the bird's foot, and strong shadows on the plastered wall. Bold strokes of bright colours above and lighter touches of duller colours below also accentuate the visual effect. The viewpoint seems to be from slightly below the bird, suggesting it was intended to be mounted in an elevated position. The lack of a frame initially also suggests the painting may have been mounted to look realistic, and may have been part of a larger assemblage of illusionary paintings.
Stone-Ferrier's supposition that it may at one time have been part of a window jamb relies in part on the painting giving the illusion of a real perched bird to passers-by, which is consistent with a raised location. She notes the importance of windows as picture settings during the Dutch Golden Age and the use of perspective boxes to create realistic interiors. Fabritius used a perspective box to create depth in other paintings, including his A View of Delft.
Fabritius used lead white paint as the base for the cream plaster of the walls, contrasting with the tan shadow of the bird. The art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon considered that the blend of colours in the diffuse shadow foreshadowed some of the techniques of the nineteenth-century French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists.
The trompe-l'œil technique has been known since ancient times, Pliny telling the story of Zeuxis painting grapes so real that birds flew down to peck at them. Jacopo de' Barbari's A Sparrowhawk is a Renaissance example of a painting that seemed intended to be mounted to create an illusion of reality to people passing the window. Although several of Fabritius's contemporaries, including his master Rembrandt, used similar effects, the depiction of a single bird is a minimalist version of the genre, and the simplicity of the design combined with the perspective technique in The Goldfinch is unique among paintings of the Dutch Golden Age. Fabritius had previously experimented with trompe-l'œil with the realistic nail that appears to be protruding from his 1649 Portrait of Abraham de Potter.
The art historian Wilhelm Martin (1876–1954) considered that The Goldfinch could only be compared with the Still-Life with Partridge and Gauntlets painted by Jacopo de' Barbari in 1504, more than a hundred years earlier. The bird itself was created with broad brush strokes, with only minor later corrections to its outline, while details, including the chain, were added with more precision. Fabritius's style differs from Rembrandt's typical chiaroscuro in his use of cool daylight, complex perspective, and dark figures against a light background, although he retains some of his master's techniques such as using the handle end of the brush to scratch lines through thick paint.
## Artist
Carel Pietersz Fabritius was born in 1622 in Middenbeemster in the Dutch Republic. Initially he worked as a carpenter. His father and his brothers Barent and Johannes were painters and, although not formally trained in art, Fabritius's ability gained him a place at Rembrandt's studio in Amsterdam. The move to Amsterdam took place in 1641, the same year Fabritius married his first wife, who came from a well-to-do family. Following her death in 1643, he moved back to Middenbeemster, where he lived until the early 1650s, then to Delft, where he joined the Guild of Saint Luke in 1652.
Fabritius died aged 32, caught in the explosion of the Delft gunpowder magazine on October 12, 1654, which killed at least 100 people and destroyed a quarter of the city, including his studio and many of his paintings. Few of his works are known to have survived. According to his biographer, Arnold Houbraken, Fabritius's student Mattias Spoors and church deacon Simon Decker also died as a result of the explosion. The Goldfinch was painted in the year Fabritius died.
Fabritius's works were well regarded by his contemporaries, and his style influenced other notable Dutch painters of the period, including Pieter de Hooch, Emanuel de Witte and Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer, who also lived in Delft, in particular used similar pale, worn walls lit by bright sunlight, and it has been suggested that he was Fabritius's student, although there is no real evidence for this claim.
## Provenance
The Goldfinch was lost and unknown for more than two centuries before it first came to light in 1859. Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who had helped to restore the reputation of Vermeer, found it in the collection of former Dutch army officer and collector Chevalier Joseph-Guillaume-Jean Camberlyn in Brussels. It was subsequently given to Thoré-Bürger by the chevalier's heirs in 1865, and he in turn bequeathed it with the rest of his collection to his companion, Apolline Lacroix, in 1869, three years after its first public exhibition in Paris in 1866.
It was sold to Étienne-François Haro, a painter, restorer and art dealer, for 5,500 francs at the Hôtel Drouot auction house in Paris on 5 December 1892, and later purchased for the Mauritshuis by its curator and art collector Abraham Bredius for 6,200 francs at the sale of the Émile Martinet collection, also at Hôtel Drouot, on 27 February 1896. As well as The Goldfinch, Martinet's collection included works attributed to other renowned artists such as Rembrandt, Goya, Steen, and Corot, and La Pythonisse, a work tentatively attributed to Fabritius's brother, Barent.
The painting is now in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague.
## Cultural references and exhibitions
The Goldfinch plays a central role in the 2013 eponymous novel by American author Donna Tartt. The novel's protagonist, 13-year-old Theodore "Theo" Decker, survives a terrorist bombing at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in which his mother dies. He takes the Fabritius painting, part of a Dutch Golden Age exhibition, with him as he escapes the building, and much of the rest of the book is based around his attempts to hide the picture, its theft and eventual return.
The book won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and was a commercial success with sales reaching nearly 1.5 million soon after the award. The book's cover is itself a trompe l'oeil, the painting visible through an illusionary tear in the paper. In reality, the painting has never been displayed in the Metropolitan Museum, although coincidentally an exhibition including The Goldfinch opened at New York's Frick Collection on the day of the novel's publication. An estimated 200,000–235,000 people attended the Frick exhibition, despite freezing temperatures, and 13,000 people joined the museum, quadrupling its subscription base.
The 2013–2014 Frick exhibition was part of a world tour of selected Golden Age paintings from the Mauritshuis during its two-year closure for a £25m renovation of the gallery, with previous showings in Tokyo, Kobe, San Francisco, Atlanta and New York, and finishing with a visit to Bologna. The Tokyo exhibition was attended by a million people, making it the most visited such event of the year. Prior to the publicity from the release of Donna Tartt's novel, Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring had typically been highlighted as the main attraction of the exhibition.
Tartt's book was adapted as a 2019 film produced by Warner Bros and Amazon Studios, directed by John Crowley, and starring Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman. Other cultural references to The Goldfinch include American artist Helen Frankenthaler's 1960 abstract expressionist interpretation of the 1654 painting titled the Fabritius Bird, and US poet Morri Creech's 2010 poem "Goldfinch", which includes the line "You stare/ from a modest trompe l'oeil heaven we don't share".
The Goldfinch was one of eight Mauritshuis masterpieces depicted on a set of €1.00 stamps issued in 2014 by the Dutch postal service, PostNL, to mark the reopening of the museum. It also featured in a 2004 set of stamps showing works by Fabritius.
## Selected bibliography
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Jonathan Agnew
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English cricket broadcaster and professional cricketer
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[
"1960 births",
"BBC sports presenters and reporters",
"Cricketers from Cheshire",
"Cricketers from Leicestershire",
"D. B. Close's XI cricketers",
"Deputy Lieutenants of Leicestershire",
"England One Day International cricketers",
"England Test cricketers",
"English cricket commentators",
"English cricketers",
"English male non-fiction writers",
"English radio personalities",
"English sportswriters",
"Leicestershire cricketers",
"Living people",
"Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers",
"Members of the Order of the British Empire",
"People educated at Uppingham School",
"People from the Borough of Melton",
"Sportspeople from Macclesfield",
"Wisden Cricketers of the Year"
] |
Jonathan Philip Agnew, MBE, DL (born 4 April 1960) is an English cricket broadcaster and a former professional cricketer. He was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, and educated at Uppingham School. He is nicknamed "Aggers", and, less commonly, "Spiro" – the latter, according to Debrett's Cricketers' Who's Who, after former US Vice-President Spiro Agnew.
Agnew had a successful first-class career as a fast bowler for Leicestershire from 1979 to 1990, returning briefly in 1992. In first-class cricket he took 666 wickets at an average of 29.25. Agnew won three Test caps for England, as well as playing three One Day Internationals in the mid-1980s, although his entire international career lasted just under a year. In county cricket, Agnew's most successful seasons came toward the end of his career, after his last international match, when he had learned to swing the ball. He was second- and third-leading wicket-taker in 1987 and 1988 respectively, including the achievement of 100 wickets in a season in 1987. He was named as one of the five Cricketers of the Year by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 1988.
While still a player, Agnew began a career in cricket journalism and commentary. Since his retirement as a player, he has become a leading voice of cricket on radio, as the BBC Radio cricket correspondent and as a commentator on Test Match Special. He has also contributed as a member of Australian broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Grandstand team.
Agnew's on-air "leg over" comment on Test Match Special, made to fellow commentator Brian Johnston in 1991, provoked giggling fits during a live broadcast and reaction from across the UK. The incident has been voted "the greatest sporting commentary ever" in a BBC poll; Michael Henderson, one of Agnew's peers and rivals, has described him as "a master broadcaster ... the pick of the sports correspondents at the BBC."
## Playing career
### Background and early years
Agnew was born on 4 April 1960 at West Park Hospital in Macclesfield, Cheshire, to Philip and Margaret Agnew. His parents' forthcoming marriage was announced in The Times in 1957: Philip Agnew was described as "the only son of Mr and Mrs Norris M. Agnew of Dukenfield Hall, Mobberley, Cheshire" and Margaret as "youngest daughter of Mr and Mrs A.F.V. McConnell of Hampton Hall, Worthen, Shropshire". The Agnews had a second son in June 1962 and were recorded as living at "Bainton near Stamford, Lincs"; in April 1966, a daughter, Felicity, was born and was announced as "a sister for Jonathan and Christopher". Agnew's paternal grandmother, Lady Mona Agnew, died aged 110 years and 170 days in 2010 and was on the list of the 100 longest-lived British people ever.
Jonathan Agnew recalls growing up on the family farm and first becoming aware of cricket aged "eight or nine"; his father would carry a radio around and listen to Test Match Special:
> "The programme sparked an interest in me, in the same way it has in so many tens of thousands of children down the years, igniting a passion that lasts a lifetime."
Driven by early enjoyment of the media coverage of cricket, Agnew developed a love for playing the game. At the end of days spent watching cricket on television in a blacked-out room with the commentary provided by the radio, Agnew would go into the garden and practise his bowling for hours, trying to imitate the players he had seen. Agnew's father, an amateur cricketer, taught him the rudiments of the sport, including an offspin action, as he wanted his son to develop into a bowler like him. Another family connection to cricket was his first cousin, Mary Duggan, who was a women's Test player for England from 1948 to 1963.
From the age of eight, Agnew boarded at Taverham Hall School near Norwich. His first cricket coach was Eileen Ryder and, according to Agnew, after "a couple of years" a professional arrived at the school: Ken Taylor, a former batsman for Yorkshire who had played three Tests for England in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Agnew attended Uppingham School for his secondary education, and left in 1978 with nine O-levels and two A-levels in German and English. From the age of 16 he developed his skills as a right-arm fast bowler out of school hours at Alf Gover's cricket school whilst at Surrey County Cricket Club. That summer, he saw fast bowler Michael Holding take 14 wickets in the 1976 Oval Test match, a performance of pace bowling referred to as "devastating" by cricket writer Norman Preston, which made a lasting impression on Agnew. More than 30 years later he wrote of his bowling during his schooldays:
> "For an eighteen-year-old bowler I was unusually fast, and enjoyed terrorising our opponents, be they schoolboys (8 wickets for 2 runs and 7 for 11 stick in the memory) or, better still, the teachers in the annual staff match. This, I gather, used to be a friendly affair until I turned up, and I relished the chance to settle a few scores on behalf of my friends – for whom I was the equivalent of a hired assassin – as well as for myself."
Having played for Surrey under-19s the previous year, he began playing for Surrey's second XI in 1977, but Surrey made no move to sign him as a player. At a home match against Hampshire, the teenage Agnew was the only player to stand up to then Surrey coach and former England player Fred Titmus after the latter racially abused the Guyanese-born Surrey player Lonsdale Skinner, an incident of which Agnew later said: "The consequences hadn’t really dawned on me. But clearly it was a career-ender". Leicestershire County Cricket Club did, however, take note of Agnew's impressive performances in local club cricket and for Uppingham School, for whom he took 37 wickets at a bowling average of 8 in 1977, and signed him while he was still a schoolboy in time for the 1978 season.
### County cricket
On his first-class debut against Lancashire in August 1978, the 18-year-old Agnew bowled to England international David Lloyd, an opening batsman with nine Test caps. Reported in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, Lloyd "was halfway through a forward defensive push when his off stump was despatched halfway towards the Leicestershire wicket-keeper." Agnew took one wicket in each innings of the match, and did not bat; Leicestershire won by an innings.
Agnew won a Whitbread Brewery award at the end of his debut season, an achievement he ascribes to the influence of his county captain, Ray Illingworth: he had taken only six first-class wickets at an average of 35. Illingworth was quoted in The Times as saying that Agnew was "the second fastest bowler" in England in 1978, behind only Bob Willis. The award afforded him the opportunity to spend a winter in Australia developing his skills, alongside fellow winners Mike Gatting, Wayne Larkins and Chris Tavaré, and to be coached by former England fast bowler, Frank Tyson. All four went on to play Test cricket. On that Australia tour, Agnew played his only youth Test, but made headlines when invited to bowl at the touring England team in the nets:
> "He struck the captain, Mike Brearley, a nasty blow in the face. It was, Agnew recalls, merely a gentle delivery off two paces that flew off a wet patch; but it did not deter the headline writers. Such early publicity did him no favours, but when a bowler arrives who is young, fast and English, a quiet settling-in period to one of the more difficult apprenticeships in sport is often denied him." – Wisden
Agnew's 1979 season was disrupted by injury. The Editor's Notes of the 1980 Wisden Cricketers' Almanack reported, under the heading "England's Promising Youngsters", that Agnew had strengthened himself over the winter by felling trees. Agnew's own account is that 1979–80 was "the worst winter of his life", although his recollection is that he spent it working as a lorry driver. He did, however, make his List A limited overs debut in 1979, playing just once, against the Sri Lanka touring team – his competitive List A debut followed in 1980, in the Benson & Hedges Cup against Scotland: he bowled just three overs (for five runs) and did not bat.
### Test cricket
Agnew's career did not initially live up to his early promise. In his first six seasons as a first-class cricketer, his largest haul of wickets was 31 in 1980. The 1984 season was his breakthrough year: he played 23 first-class matches, taking 84 wickets at an average of 28.72. Playing in the warm-up game against Cambridge University, he achieved figures of 8–47 (taking 8 wickets while conceding 47 runs) from 20.4 overs and was included in the first team for the County Championship matches that followed.
He carried that success forward into the County Championship, picking up wickets for Leicestershire including a ten wicket match haul against Surrey in June, and five wickets in an innings against Kent in the days leading up to the fifth Test against West Indies. The England selectors took note and, with the West Indies leading the series 4–0, Agnew and Richard Ellison were given debuts, in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to avoid the "blackwash".
Wisden describes how in the first innings, Agnew's accuracy was affected by debutant nerves, but an improved display in the second innings resulted in figures of 2–51. Agnew describes how Ian Botham helped him secure both wickets, catching Gordon Greenidge in the slips, and passing on some advice on how to dismiss Viv Richards, Botham's great friend: "Botham said: 'Right. Don't pitch a single ball up at him. Have two men back for the hook, and bowl short every ball.' This I did for three overs or so, by which time Viv was looking a little exasperated, but was definitely on the back foot. Finally I pitched one up, the great man missed it and umpire David Constant ruled that Richards was LBW for 15." Wisden called the pair of batsmen Agnew's "first illustrious victims in Test cricket".
England's next match was a one-off home Test against Sri Lanka and Agnew retained his place in the England team. At the time, Sri Lanka were regarded as the minnows of world cricket: this was only their 12th Test match and their first at Lord's, but they dominated the match, taking a 121-run lead on first innings and declaring twice. It was a disappointment for England and, in a batsman-friendly match in which the Sri Lankans racked up 785 runs for just 14 wickets, Agnew suffered. Wisden described England's pacemen as ineffective; Agnew's match figures were 2–177 off 43 overs. Poor performance and a muscle injury limited him to bowling a single over on the last day; later, Agnew reflected on other negative aspects of this match: "I felt a complete outsider, not part of the set-up. I think the feeling in the dressing room was that the game had been a bit of a cock-up."
England toured India and Sri Lanka that winter. Agnew replaced the injured Paul Allott after the second Test. However, he failed to be selected for a Test match, with England's decision to field two spinners (Pat Pocock and Phil Edmonds) in each Test playing a part in limiting Agnew's opportunities. Agnew played just one first-class match on the tour, versus South Zone in Secunderabad, achieving match figures of seven wickets at an average of 29, but he did play in three One Day Internationals (ODIs), two in India and one in Australia. His debut ODI was promising, as he took 3–38 in a losing cause. However, in his remaining two ODIs, he proved very expensive, taking no further wickets and conceding more than seven runs an over in each.
Agnew began the 1985 season vying with the established England fast bowlers to get back into the Test side. Over the winter, the side had been settled, with Norman Cowans and Chris Cowdrey playing all five Tests. Neil Foster and Richard Ellison shared the third spot alongside the spinners, playing two and three Tests respectively. Cowdrey and Ellison had struggled with the ball, both averaging more than 70. However, the side was extensively remodelled for the first Test of that summer's Ashes series. Of the bowlers who had played the last Test in India, only Cowans had survived the cull and it set the tone for the series. England won the first Test, yet dropped Cowans and Peter Willey, replacing them with Phil Edmonds and Foster. After losing the second Test, and struggling with the ball in the third Test, when Australia made 539 all out in their only innings, England decided to make further changes.
Agnew had performed consistently in county cricket through June and July, culminating in what was to be, statistically, his finest moment as a bowler. Playing against Kent, he took 9–70 in the first innings. His timing was perfect and he was called up for the Fourth Test at Old Trafford to partner Ian Botham and Paul Allott in an all-Cheshire born seam attack. The match finished as a draw, and Agnew failed to take a wicket. He was relegated from an opening bowler in the first innings, to fifth bowler in the second, in which he only bowled nine overs. He was subsequently dropped again from the side, only for Richard Ellison to cement his place with match-winning performances that helped claim the Ashes for England.
### Later playing career and retirement
In the 1987 season, Agnew achieved the feat of 100 first-class wickets in an English cricket season when he took 101 wickets for his county. He was the first Leicestershire player to achieve this milestone since Jack Birkenshaw in 1968, which was the season before the county programme was greatly reduced, making the feat much less common. By this stage, he was working on local radio during the winters and he found the reassurance of the additional income and career path a major factor in his improved form. Wisden preferred to attribute his success to "bowling off a shorter run and ... a wicked slower ball added to his armoury". The achievement led to him being selected as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year.
Agnew's form remained good: he followed his 1987 feat of taking the second-most wickets in the County Championship by taking the third-most in 1988. In 1989, with two years of good form behind him and England losing 4–0 in the 1989 Ashes series, Agnew "came frustratingly close to the recall to the England team that I had set my heart on."
County captain and friend of Agnew, David Gower was England captain, and a number of fast bowlers from around the country called the telephone in the Leicestershire dressing room, to tell Gower that they were injured and unavailable for the Sixth Test. According to Agnew's account, Gower was at a loss as to whom to call into the squad.
Agnew recalls that county colleague Peter Willey made a suggestion:
> "'What about Agnew?' suggested Peter Willey ... 'He's bowling pretty well at the moment.' David's face lit up. 'Of course!' he said. 'Jonathan, you're in. Go home, get your England stuff ready, and I'll call first thing tomorrow ...' Even though I was approximately the seventeenth choice, this was still fantastic news ... After three disappointing Test appearances, this was my second chance, and the opportunity to set the record straight ... [The following day] the telephone finally rang. 'Got some bad news, I'm afraid,' David began. 'I couldn't persuade Ted Dexter or Mickey Stewart, so you're not in any more. They've gone for Alan Igglesden. Know anything about him?' With that, David must have known his influence as England captain was over – and indeed Graham Gooch succeeded him after that Test. I felt utterly devastated, and knew I would never play for England again, which had been my main motivating force. So when the Today newspaper offered me the post of cricket correspondent the following summer, it was an easy decision to make. I might have been only thirty, which was no age to retire from professional cricket, and I could easily have played for another five years. But it was definitely time to move on."
Agnew formally retired from playing professional cricket at the end of the following season: Leicestershire's last match of the 1990 Championship season was his last first-class game. Aged 30, Agnew took 1–42 in Derbyshire's only innings and scored 6 in his only turn to bat. In 1992, two years after retirement, Leicestershire experienced an injury crisis before their NatWest Trophy semi-final against Essex. Agnew answered a request to assist and played, finishing the match with figures of 12–2–31–1 (bowling twelve overs, including two maiden overs, and taking one wicket for 31 runs). Leicestershire won the match and progressed to the final, but Agnew chose not to play.
### Playing style and career summary
Agnew's best first-class bowling figures were 9 for 70 and he took six ten-wicket hauls in 218 matches. In the 1988 Cricketer of the Year editorial on Agnew, Wisden noted that "his pace comes from a whippy wrist action and co-ordination ... In the field, Agnew has at times appeared to be moving with his bootlaces tied together, but his long run-up was one of the more graceful in the game. However, it was the shortening of that run-up, and a cutting-down of pace, which led to ... achievements [late in his career]"
As a batsman, Agnew had some highs, but it was his weaker suit. His highest first-class batting score was 90, starting initially as nightwatchman in 1987 against Yorkshire, at North Marine Road Ground, Scarborough. Wisden commented, "Agnew hit a spectacular, career-best 90 from 68 balls, including six sixes and eight fours, and then took the first five Yorkshire wickets to fall". Wisden commented that Agnew was no all-rounder, but he could "certainly bat ... on his day he can destroy anything pitched up around off stump." The same piece noted his usual playing style, "playing hard but always with a sense of fun".
Agnew reflects on his playing career as having had two periods:
> "My career could be divided up into two sections: the first being when I was an out-and-out fast bowler and played for England when I probably should not have done; and the second being when I slowed down a bit, learned how to swing the ball and did not play for England when I probably should have done.
His final Test was only twelve months after his England debut, and his first and last ODIs were played less than a month apart. Cricket commentator Colin Bateman opined, "his fleeting taste of Test cricket should have been added to in 1987 and 1988 when he was the most consistent fast bowler in the country, taking 194 wickets, but in 1989, when England were desperate for pace bowlers, his omission amounted to wanton neglect by a regime which questioned his desire". In 1988, when Agnew was selected as a Cricketer of the Year, Wisden recorded this verdict on the contrariness of Agnew's Test career: "Asked about Agnew's omission, the chairman of selectors, P. B. H. May, expressed concern about his fitness – rather a baffling statement to make about someone who bowled more overs than any other fast bowler in the Championship."
## Media and broadcasting career
Agnew began gaining experience as a journalist in 1987, while still playing cricket, when at the invitation of John Rawling he took off-season employment with BBC Radio Leicester as a sports producer. It was during this period that he "fell in love with radio", and following his retirement, he had a short stint as chief cricket writer of Today newspaper. While covering the 1990–91 Ashes series for Today, he was approached by Peter Baxter about joining Test Match Special. Unhappy at certain editorial decisions that had been taken during his time with the newspaper, Agnew agreed to attend an interview after the tour.
Agnew joined Test Match Special in 1991, in time for the first Test match of the summer. He was initially a junior member of the Test Match Special team, learning at close quarters from figures such as Brian Johnston, Henry Blofeld and Bill Frindall. The same year, he was also appointed the BBC's cricket correspondent, taking over from Test Match Special colleague, Christopher Martin-Jenkins. In 2007, when asked which sports journalist he most respected, Martin-Jenkins named Agnew, because he "combines astute journalism with apparently effortless communication skills." He has also commentated for the Australian ABC Radio network during Ashes series in Australia.
When Channel 4 won the broadcasting rights to television coverage of England's home Test matches in 1998, Agnew was approached by the broadcaster and offered a job on the commentary team. Agnew declined the opportunity, opting to remain BBC cricket correspondent, in part because he was a "radio man" and in part out of loyalty. The following year, England hosted the 1999 Cricket World Cup. The BBC had the UK television rights, but with so many specialist TV cricket presenters now at Channel 4 and therefore unavailable to the BBC, Agnew was asked to present the coverage. His recollections of the experience are that it was something of a trial, helped only by the experienced Richie Benaud alongside him:
> I really had no option but to agree to do it, despite my reservations about working in television. Coming so quickly after my decision to stay on the radio, this was quite an irony. I was given one day of training ... [Transmission ended with the presenter being given a countdown] from one minute to zero, at which point you have to say goodbye. I did not find that easy at all ... I made a real hash of it after one of the early games ... [Richie] ... very kindly, suggested a plan ... as soon as the count started in our earpieces I would ask him a question, and he would talk until the count reached eight seconds to go. I would then thank him, turn to the camera and tell the audience briefly about the next game to be televised. Miraculously, for the rest of the tournament I always heard 'zero' in my ear at the moment I said goodbye ... the whole experience served to confirm my belief that my decision to stick with Test Match Special was the right one.
In addition to his writing and broadcasting work, Agnew's commentary has been recorded for several computer games, including the International Cricket Captain and Brian Lara Cricket series. He is a shareholder in TestMatchExtra.com Ltd, a company which runs the website of the same address and acquired The Wisden Cricketer magazine from BSkyB in December 2010.
From 2001 to 2005, Agnew provided the voice of Flynn, the oval-shaped screen, on children's gameshow 50/50.
Agnew has won many awards for his broadcasting, including two Sony Awards for Best Reporter (1992 and 1994), and Best Radio Broadcaster of the Year (2010), an award from the Association of Sports Journalists. Agnew was made an Honorary Doctor of Arts by De Montfort University, Leicester in November 2008, and an Honorary Doctor of Letters by Loughborough University in July 2011.
His peers in sports journalism have frequently commented on Agnew's skills as a broadcaster and writer. Michael Henderson, in the aftermath of the Stanford cricket controversy, wrote of Agnew as a "master broadcaster ... the pick of the sports correspondents at the BBC ... Agnew's is a sane, reasonable voice in a game that is going potty. Fair-minded, even-tempered, he has become one of the finest specialists the BBC has ever had. In his understated way he speaks for the game: not the people who play it."
In 2016 Agnew was a member of the BBC commentary team at the 2016 Summer Olympics, covering equestrian events. He earns £150,000 – £199,999 as a BBC sports correspondent.
Agnew was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant of Leicestershire in October 2015, and as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to broadcasting.
### Notable broadcasting incidents
In 2001, Agnew was part of the BBC team that was sent to Sri Lanka to cover England's Test match series. As a result of confusion and a row over broadcasting rights, the BBC team found itself barred from the Galle International Stadium, where the first Test was to take place. Agnew and Pat Murphy refused to be defeated and "decamped to the fort ramparts overlooking the ground and broadcast their programme from there. With both team and equipment protected from the sun by an umbrella held by Mr Agnew's driver, Simmons, it made a colourful scene." The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) chief executive, Tim Lamb became involved in discussions and the Test Match Special team were allowed to return to the ground.
The Daily Telegraph called Agnew and Murphy's effort, "new heights of ingenuity". Agnew's reaction to the event was, "It's a sad day for everyone involved in English cricket. Is it really that cricket is getting so greedy that everyone who wants to come and report on the game for the good of the game is going to have to be charged for it?" However, he remained upbeat about the situation: "Actually I get rather more of a panoramic view of it from up here than I did yesterday in my commentary box. There's a little road that runs round the back of the ground. All manner of people are trundling up and down – buses, bikes and little three wheeled tuk-tuks – it's rather fun."
In 2004, the Zimbabwe government banned media from following the England cricket team tour of the country. Agnew's reaction was combative, appearing on BBC Breakfast and giving his opinion that the ban presented the ECB with a chance to withdraw from the controversial tour and that they should take the opportunity.
In the summer of 2008, then England captain Michael Vaughan reacted testily on-air to questions by Agnew about his batting form. When Vaughan resigned shortly thereafter, Mike Atherton, writing in The Times, commented that it had been an out-of-character outburst that was a portent of the resignation. When Atherton had himself been England captain, Agnew had led the calls for Atherton to resign over a controversy known as the "dirt in the pocket" affair. Fellow BBC commentator Jack Bannister felt that Agnew's comments were inappropriate, but only to the extent that he had referred to his friendship with Atherton: Bannister advised Agnew that he should continue to be honest and forthright as a reporter.
Agnew was involved in a minor controversy regarding an appearance by Lily Allen on Test Match Special in 2009. The Daily Telegraph reported that "the cricket-loving Allen struck up an instant rapport with Agnew, and the BBC received largely positive feedback for the 30-minute interview", but Will Buckley, writing for The Observer, described Agnew's "amorous ambitions" as "positioned ... firmly on the pervy side of things". Agnew was furious, noting he "gave ... Will Buckley 24 hrs to apologise for calling me a pervert, and he has declined ... As you can imagine, I have taken being called a pervert quite badly." Allen herself supported Agnew: "[I] really think this Will Buckley guy should apologise to ... [Agnew], he was nothing but kind and gentlemanly to me during our interview. I don't know 1 person that agrees with The Observer on this one." Buckley eventually apologised.
### "Leg over" incident
Agnew has been known to laugh at or include occasional sexual innuendo while on air. One example took place in August 1991, when Agnew was commentating with Brian Johnston. In a review of the day, Johnston was describing how Ian Botham, while batting, had overbalanced and tried, but failed, to step over his stumps. Botham was consequently given out hit wicket. Agnew's comment on this action was: "He just didn't quite get his leg over." Botham had attracted a number of headlines during his career for his sexual exploits and in British English, "getting one's leg over" is a euphemism for having sexual intercourse.
The comment led to Johnston becoming incapacitated by laughter. He initially tried to continue his summary, before becoming unable to speak for laughing, at one point saying "Aggers, for goodness' sake, stop it" as he struggled to regain his composure.
The incident was heard by thousands of commuters driving home from work, many of whom were forced to stop driving because they were laughing so much: a two-mile traffic jam at the entrance to the Dartford Tunnel was reportedly caused by drivers unable to pay the toll due to laughter. Fourteen years later, in 2005, Agnew's line, "Just didn't quite get his leg over" was voted "the greatest sporting commentary of all time" by listeners to BBC Radio 5 Live. The other eight finalists included Kenneth Wolstenholme's "They think it's all over – it is now!" and Ian Robertson's "This is the one. He drops for World Cup glory ... It's up! It's over! He's done it! Jonny Wilkinson is England's hero yet again". Agnew and Johnston secured 78% of the votes.
## Private life
Agnew's first marriage was to Beverley in 1983; it ended in divorce in 1992, a year after he became BBC cricket correspondent. He has written about the role that cricket played in the collapse of the relationship, comparing his circumstances with those of then England batsman Graham Thorpe. He also found that his job interfered with his relationship with his children:
> I had two young children, aged seven and five ... it was quickly evident that for me to have custody of my daughters – or even to form a relationship with them – was made impossible by my job. What chance do you have when, be it playing Test cricket or commentating on it, you are away for months at a time each and every winter? ... There was one occasion when I did not recognise my eldest, Jennifer, when I returned from one tour ... my children continue to ask me why I did not resign and take a job that would have kept me in the country and allowed me to see them more often. I find that one especially hard to answer."
Agnew has subsequently remarried: he met Emma Agnew, current editor of BBC East Midlands Today, when they worked together on BBC Radio Leicestershire.
Agnew suffers from Dupuytren's contracture, a medical condition that affects the connective tissue in his hands. He has had numerous operations to address the progressive condition, which causes the hands to contract into a claw-like position.
### Personality
During Agnew's playing career, a dispute with team-mate Phillip DeFreitas attracted media attention: when DeFreitas poured salt over Agnew's lunch, Agnew responded by throwing DeFreitas' cricket bag and kit from the dressing room balcony. Former England cricketer Derek Pringle has written about Agnew's sense of humour, describing him as "hysterical". The pair toured Sri Lanka together on England B's 1986 tour. Pringle recalls that one hot day when England were in the field, Agnew came in for lunch: "It's \*\*\*\*ing red hot on the field, and when you come off it's \*\*\*\*ing red hot in the dressing-room," Agnew screamed. "Then, what do you get for lunch, \*\*\*\*ing red hot curry?"
### Assisted suicide allegation
It was reported in various newspapers in 2013 that Agnew had offered to accompany Brian Dodds, his second wife's ex-husband, to the Dignitas assisted suicide clinic in Zurich after Dodds was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Dodds died in England from the disease in 2005.
### BBC reprimand
In 2019, journalist Jonathan Liew wrote an article in which he expressed concern about some of the language used in the media to describe Jofra Archer’s selection for England. Liew wrote “Who doesn’t love morale and camaraderie, after all? – Until you begin to question why Archer is deemed such a grave threat to it.” Agnew called Liew a "“sad racist troll after clickbait” on Twitter, adding “Fucking disgrace. You have massive chips on your shoulders... you are a racist.” Agnew then went on to describe Liew as "strange" and "a cunt" followed by questioning “who the fuck are you”. Agnew was reprimanded by the BBC; he also deleted his Twitter account. In October 2022 a conversation between Agnew and Liew was published by The Observer in which both expressed regret over the incident.
|
262,875 |
Tichborne case
| 1,168,615,748 |
Legal case that captivated Victorian England in the 1860s and 1870s
|
[
"19th-century hoaxes",
"Court of Common Pleas (England) cases",
"Court of King's Bench (England) cases",
"History of Hampshire",
"Hoaxes in the United Kingdom",
"Impostors",
"Stonyhurst College",
"Wagga Wagga"
] |
The Tichborne case was a legal cause célèbre that captivated Victorian England in the 1860s and 1870s. It concerned the claims by a man sometimes referred to as Thomas Castro or as Arthur Orton, but usually termed "the Claimant", to be the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy. He failed to convince the courts, was convicted of perjury and served a long prison sentence.
Roger Tichborne, heir to the family's title and fortunes, was presumed to have died in a shipwreck in 1854 at age 25. His mother clung to a belief that he might have survived, and after hearing rumours that he had made his way to Australia, she advertised extensively in Australian newspapers, offering a reward for information. In 1866, a Wagga Wagga butcher known as Thomas Castro came forward claiming to be Roger Tichborne. Although his manners and bearing were unrefined, he gathered support and travelled to England. He was instantly accepted by Lady Tichborne as her son, although other family members were dismissive and sought to expose him as an impostor.
During protracted enquiries before the case went to court in 1871, details emerged suggesting that the Claimant might be Arthur Orton, a butcher's son from Wapping in London, who had gone to sea as a boy and had last been heard of in Australia. After a civil court had rejected the Claimant's case, he was charged with perjury; while awaiting trial he campaigned throughout the country to gain popular support. In 1874, a criminal court jury decided that he was not Roger Tichborne and declared him to be Arthur Orton. Before passing a sentence of 14 years, the judge condemned the behaviour of the Claimant's counsel, Edward Kenealy, who was subsequently disbarred because of his conduct.
After the trial, Kenealy instigated a popular radical reform movement, the Magna Charta Association, which championed the Claimant's cause for some years. Kenealy was elected to Parliament in 1875 as a radical independent but was not an effective parliamentarian. The movement was in decline when the Claimant was released in 1884, and he had no dealings with it. In 1895, he confessed to being Orton, only to recant almost immediately. He lived generally in poverty for the rest of his life and was destitute at the time of his death in 1898. Although most commentators have accepted the court's view that the Claimant was Orton, some analysts believe that an element of doubt remains as to his true identity and that, conceivably, he was Roger Tichborne.
## Sir Roger Tichborne
### Tichborne family history
The Tichbornes, of Tichborne Park near Alresford in Hampshire, were an old English Catholic family who had been prominent in the area since before the Norman Conquest. After the Reformation in the 16th century, although one of their number was hanged, drawn and quartered for complicity in the Babington Plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I, the family in general remained loyal to the Crown, and in 1621 Benjamin Tichborne was created a baronet for services to King James I.
In 1803 the seventh baronet, Sir Henry Tichborne, was captured by the French in Verdun during the Napoleonic Wars and detained as a civil prisoner for some years. With him in captivity were his fourth son, James, and a nobly born Englishman, Henry Seymour of Knoyle. Despite his confinement, Seymour managed to conduct an affair with the daughter of the Duc de Bourbon, as a result of which a daughter, Henriette Felicité, was born in about 1807. Years later, when Henriette had passed her 20th birthday and remained unmarried, Seymour thought his former companion James Tichborne might make a suitable husband—although James was close to his own age and was physically unprepossessing. The couple were married in August 1827; on 5 January 1829 Henriette gave birth to a son, Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne.
Sir Henry had been succeeded in 1821 by his eldest son, Henry Joseph, who fathered seven daughters but no male heir. As baronetcies are inherited only by males, when Henry Joseph died in 1845 the immediate heir was his younger brother Edward, who had assumed the surname of Doughty as a condition of a legacy. Edward's only son died in childhood, so James Tichborne became next in line to the baronetcy, and after him, Roger. As the family's fortunes had been greatly augmented by the Doughty bequest, this was a considerable material prospect.
After Roger's birth, James and Henriette had three more children: two daughters who died in infancy and a second son, Alfred, born in 1839. The marriage was unhappy, and the couple spent much time apart, he in England, she in Paris with Roger. As a consequence of his upbringing, Roger spoke mainly French, and his English was heavily accented. In 1845 James decided that Roger should complete his education in England and placed him in the Jesuit boarding school Stonyhurst College, where he remained until 1848. In 1849 he sat the British army entrance examinations and then took a commission in the 6th Dragoon Guards, in which he served for three years, mainly in Ireland.
When on leave, Roger often stayed with his uncle Edward at Tichborne Park and became attracted to his cousin Katherine Doughty, four years his junior. Sir Edward and his wife, though they were fond of their nephew, did not consider marriage between first cousins desirable. At one point the young couple were forbidden to meet, though they continued to do so clandestinely. Feeling harassed and frustrated, Roger hoped to escape from the situation through a spell of overseas military duty; when it became clear that the regiment would remain in the British Isles, he resigned his commission. On 1 March 1853 he left for a private tour of South America on board La Pauline, bound for Valparaíso in Chile.
### Travels and disappearance
On 19 June 1853 La Pauline reached Valparaíso, where letters informed Roger that his father had succeeded to the baronetcy, Sir Edward having died in May. In all, Roger spent 10 months in South America, accompanied in the first stages by a family servant, John Moore. In the course of his inland travels he may have visited the small town of Melipilla, which lies on the route between Valparaíso and Santiago. Moore, who had fallen ill, was paid off in Santiago, while Roger travelled to Peru, where he took a long hunting trip. By the end of 1853 he was back in Valparaíso, and early in the new year he began a crossing of the Andes. At the end of January, he reached Buenos Aires, where he wrote to his aunt, Lady Doughty, indicating that he was heading for Brazil, then Jamaica and finally Mexico. The last positive sightings of Roger were in Rio de Janeiro, in April 1854, awaiting a sea passage to Jamaica. Although he lacked a passport, he secured a berth on a ship, the Bella, which sailed for Jamaica on 20 April.
On 24 April 1854 a capsized ship's boat bearing the name Bella was discovered off the Brazilian coast, together with some wreckage but no personnel, and the ship's loss with all hands was assumed. The Tichborne family were told in June that Roger must be presumed lost, though they retained a faint hope, fed by rumours, that another ship had picked up survivors and taken them to Australia. Sir James Tichborne died in June 1862, at which point, if he was alive, Roger became the 11th baronet. As he was by then presumed dead, the title passed to his younger brother Alfred, whose financial recklessness rapidly brought about his near-bankruptcy. Tichborne Park was vacated and leased to tenants.
Encouraged by a clairvoyant's assurance that her elder son was alive and well, in February 1863 Roger's mother Henriette, now Lady Tichborne, began placing regular newspaper advertisements in The Times offering a reward for information about Roger Tichborne and the fate of the Bella. None of these produced results; however, in May 1865 Lady Tichborne saw an advertisement placed by Arthur Cubitt of Sydney, Australia, on behalf of his "Missing Friends Agency". She wrote to him, and he agreed to place a series of notices in Australian newspapers. These gave details of the Bella's last voyage and described Roger Tichborne as "of a delicate constitution, rather tall, with very light brown hair and blue eyes". A "most liberal reward" would be given "for any information that may definitely point out his fate".
## Claimant appears
### In Australia
In October 1865 Cubitt informed Lady Tichborne that William Gibbes, a lawyer from Wagga Wagga, had identified Roger Tichborne in the person of a bankrupt local butcher using the name Thomas Castro. During his bankruptcy examination Castro had mentioned an entitlement to property in England. He had also talked of experiencing a shipwreck and was smoking a briar pipe which carried the initials "R.C.T." When challenged by Gibbes to reveal his true name, Castro had initially been reticent but eventually agreed that he was indeed the missing Roger Tichborne; henceforth he became generally known as the Claimant.
Cubitt offered to accompany the supposed lost son back to England and wrote to Lady Tichborne requesting funds. Meanwhile, Gibbes asked the Claimant to make out a will and to write to his mother. The will incorrectly gave Lady Tichborne's name as "Hannah Frances", and disposed of numerous nonexistent parcels of supposed Tichborne property. In the letter to his mother, the Claimant's references to his former life were vague and equivocal but were enough to convince Lady Tichborne that he was her elder son. Her willingness to accept the Claimant may have been influenced by the death of her younger son, Alfred, in February.
In June 1866 the Claimant moved to Sydney, where he was able to raise money from banks on the basis of a statutory declaration that he was Roger Tichborne. The statement was later found to contain many errors, although the birthdate and parentage details were given correctly. It included a brief account of how he had arrived in Australia: he and others from the sinking Bella, he said, had been picked up by the Osprey, bound for Melbourne. On arrival he had taken the name Thomas Castro from an acquaintance from Melipilla and had wandered for some years before settling in Wagga Wagga. He had married a pregnant housemaid, Mary Ann Bryant, and taken her child, a daughter, as his own; a further daughter had been born in March 1866.
While in Sydney the Claimant encountered two former servants of the Tichborne family. One was a gardener, Michael Guilfoyle, who at first acknowledged the identity of Roger Tichborne but later changed his mind when asked to provide money to facilitate the return to England. The second, Andrew Bogle, was a former slave at the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos's plantation in Jamaica who had thereafter worked for Sir Edward for many years before retiring. The elderly Bogle did not immediately recognise the Claimant, whose 189 pounds (86 kg) weight contrasted sharply with Roger's remembered slender build; however, Bogle quickly accepted that the Claimant was Roger, and remained convinced until the end of his life. On 2 September 1866 the Claimant, having received funds from England, sailed from Sydney on board the Rakaia with his wife and children in first class, and a small retinue including Bogle and his youngest son Henry George in second class. Good living in Sydney had raised his weight on departure to 210 pounds (95 kg), and during the long voyage he added another 40 pounds (18 kg). After a journey involving several changes of ship, the party arrived at Tilbury on 25 December 1866.
### Recognition in France
After depositing his family in a London hotel, the Claimant called at Lady Tichborne's address and was told she was in Paris. He then went to Wapping in East London, where he enquired after a local family named Orton. Finding that they had left the area, he identified himself to a neighbour as a friend of Arthur Orton, who, he said, was now one of the wealthiest men in Australia. The significance of the Wapping visit would become apparent only later. On 29 December the Claimant visited Alresford and stayed at the Swan Hotel, where the landlord detected a resemblance to the Tichbornes. The Claimant confided that he was the missing Sir Roger but asked that this be kept secret. He also sought information concerning the Tichborne family.
Back in London, the Claimant employed a solicitor, John Holmes, who agreed to go with him to Paris to meet Lady Tichborne. This meeting took place on 11 January at the Hôtel de Lille. As soon as she saw his face, Lady Tichborne accepted him. At Holmes's behest she lodged with the British Embassy a signed declaration formally testifying that the Claimant was her son. She was unmoved when Father Châtillon, Roger's childhood tutor, declared the Claimant an impostor, and she allowed Holmes to inform The Times in London that she had recognised Roger. She settled an income of £1,000 a year on him, and accompanied him to England to declare her support before the more sceptical members of the Tichborne family.
## Laying the groundwork, 1867–1871
### Support and opposition
The Claimant quickly acquired significant supporters; the Tichborne family's solicitor Edward Hopkins accepted him, as did J. P. Lipscomb, the family's doctor. Lipscomb, after a detailed medical examination, reported that the Claimant possessed a distinctive genital malformation. It would later be suggested that Roger Tichborne had this same defect, but this could not be established beyond speculation and hearsay. Many people were impressed by the Claimant's seeming ability to recall small details of Roger Tichborne's early life, such as the fly fishing tackle he had used. Several soldiers who had served with Roger in the Dragoons, including his former batman Thomas Carter, recognised the Claimant as Roger. Other notable supporters included Lord Rivers, a landowner and sportsman, and Guildford Onslow, the Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Guildford who became one of the Claimant's staunchest advocates. Rohan MacWilliam, in his account of the case, calls this wide degree of recognition remarkable, particularly given the Claimant's increasing physical differences from the slim Roger. By mid-June 1867 the Claimant's weight had reached almost 300 pounds (140 kg) and would increase even more in the ensuing years.
Despite Lady Tichborne's insistence that the Claimant was her son, the rest of the Tichbornes and their related families were almost unanimous in declaring him a fraud. They recognised Alfred Tichborne's infant son, Henry Alfred, as the 12th baronet. Lady Doughty, Sir Edward's widow, had initially accepted the evidence from Australia but changed her mind soon after the Claimant's arrival in England. Lady Tichborne's brother Henry Seymour denounced the Claimant as false when he found that the latter neither spoke nor understood French (Roger's first language as a child) and lacked any trace of a French accent. The Claimant was unable to identify several family members and complained about attempts to catch him out by presenting him with impostors. Vincent Gosford, a former Tichborne Park steward, was unimpressed by the Claimant, who, when asked to name the contents of a sealed package that Roger left with Gosford before his departure in 1853, said he could not remember. The family believed that the Claimant had acquired from Bogle and other sources information that enabled him to demonstrate some knowledge of the family's affairs, including, for example, the locations of certain pictures in Tichborne Park. Apart from Lady Tichborne, a distant cousin, Anthony John Wright Biddulph, was the only relation who accepted the Claimant as genuine; however, as long as Lady Tichborne was alive and maintaining her support, the Claimant's position remained strong.
On 31 July 1867 the Claimant underwent a judicial examination at the Chancery Division of the Royal Courts of Justice. He testified that after his arrival in Melbourne in July 1854 he had worked for William Foster at a cattle station in Gippsland under the name of Thomas Castro. While there, he had met Arthur Orton, a fellow Englishman. After leaving Foster's employment the Claimant had subsequently wandered the country, sometimes with Orton, working in various capacities before setting up as a butcher in Wagga Wagga in 1865. On the basis of this information, the Tichborne family sent an agent, John Mackenzie, to Australia to make further enquiries. Mackenzie located Foster's widow, who produced the old station records. These showed no reference to "Thomas Castro", although the employment of an "Arthur Orton" was recorded. Foster's widow also identified a photograph of the Claimant as Arthur Orton, thus providing the first direct evidence that the Claimant might in fact be Orton. In Wagga Wagga one local resident recalled the butcher Castro saying that he had learned his trade in Wapping. When this information reached London, enquiries were made in Wapping by a private detective, ex-police inspector Jack Whicher, and the Claimant's visit in December 1866 was revealed.
### Arthur Orton
Arthur Orton, a butcher's son born on 20 March 1834 in Wapping, had gone to sea as a boy and had been in Chile in the early 1850s. Sometime in 1852 he arrived in Hobart, Tasmania, in the transport ship Middleton and later moved to mainland Australia. His employment by Foster at Gippsland terminated around 1857 with a dispute over wages. Thereafter he disappears; if he was not Castro, there is no further direct evidence of Orton's existence, although strenuous efforts were made to find him. The Claimant hinted that some of his activities with Orton were of a criminal nature and that to confound the authorities they had sometimes exchanged names. Most of Orton's family failed to recognise the Claimant as their long-lost kinsman, although it was later revealed that he had paid them money. However, a former sweetheart of Orton's, Mary Ann Loder, did identify the Claimant as Orton.
### Financial problems
Lady Tichborne died on 12 March 1868, thus depriving the Claimant of his principal advocate and his main source of income. He outraged the family by insisting on taking the position of chief mourner at her funeral mass. His lost income was rapidly replaced by a fund, set up by supporters, that provided a house near Alresford and an income of £1,400 a year ().
In September 1868, together with his legal team, the Claimant went to South America to meet face-to-face with potential witnesses in Melipilla who might confirm his identity. He disembarked at Buenos Aires, ostensibly to travel to Valparaíso overland and there rejoin his advisers who were continuing by sea. After waiting two months in Buenos Aires he caught a ship home. His explanations for this sudden retreat—poor health and the dangers from brigands—did not convince his backers, many of whom withdrew their support; Holmes resigned as his solicitor. Furthermore, on their return his advisers reported that no one in Melipilla had heard of "Tichborne", although they remembered a young English sailor called "Arturo".
The Claimant was now bankrupt. In 1870 his new legal advisers launched a novel fundraising scheme: Tichborne Bonds, an issue of 1,000 debentures of £100 face value, the holders of which would be repaid with interest when the Claimant obtained his inheritance. About £40,000 was raised, though the bonds quickly traded at a considerable discount and were soon being exchanged for derisory sums. The scheme allowed the Claimant to continue to meet his living and legal expenses for a while. After a delay while the Franco-Prussian War and its aftermath prevented key witnesses from leaving Paris, the civil case that the Claimant hoped would confirm his identity finally came to court in May 1871.
## Civil case: Tichborne v. Lushington, 1871–72
The case was listed in the Court of Common Pleas as Tichborne v. Lushington, in the form of an action for the ejectment of Colonel Lushington, the tenant of Tichborne Park. The real purpose, however, was to establish the Claimant's identity as Sir Roger Tichborne and his rights to the family's estates; failure on his part would expose him as an impostor. In addition to Tichborne Park's 2,290 acres (930 ha), the estates included manors, lands and farms in Hampshire, and considerable properties in London and elsewhere, which altogether produced an annual income of over £20,000, equivalent to about £ in .
### Evidence and cross-examination
The hearing, which took place within the Palace of Westminster, began on 11 May 1871 before Sir William Bovill, who was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. The Claimant's legal team was led by William Ballantine and Harding Giffard, both highly experienced advocates. Opposing them, acting on instructions from the bulk of the Tichborne family, were John Duke Coleridge, the Solicitor General (he was promoted to Attorney-General during the hearing), and Henry Hawkins, a future High Court judge who was then at the height of his powers as a cross-examiner. In his opening speech, Ballantine made much of Roger Tichborne's unhappy childhood, his overbearing father, his poor education and his frequently unwise choices of companions. The Claimant's experiences in an open boat following the wreck of the Bella had, said Ballantine, impaired his memories of his earlier years, which explained his uncertain recall. Attempts to identify his client as Arthur Orton were, Ballantine argued, the concoctions of "irresponsible" private investigators acting for the Tichborne family.
The first witnesses for the Claimant included former officers and men from Roger Tichborne's regiment, all of whom declared their belief that he was genuine. Among servants and former servants of the Tichborne family called by Ballantine was John Moore, Roger's valet in South America. He testified that the Claimant had remembered many small details of their months together, including clothing worn and the name of a pet dog the pair had adopted. Roger's cousin Anthony Biddulph explained that he had accepted the Claimant only after spending much time in his company.
On 30 May Ballantine called the Claimant to the stand. During his examination-in-chief, the Claimant answered questions on Arthur Orton, whom he described as "a large-boned man with sharp features and a lengthy face slightly marked with smallpox". He had lost sight of Orton between 1862 and 1865, but they had met again in Wagga Wagga, where the Claimant had discussed his inheritance. Under cross-examination the Claimant was evasive when pressed for further details of his relationship with Orton, saying that he did not wish to incriminate himself. After questioning him on his visit to Wapping, Hawkins asked him directly: "Are you Arthur Orton?" to which he replied "I am not". The Claimant displayed considerable ignorance when questioned about his time at Stonyhurst. He could not identify Virgil, confused Latin with Greek, and did not understand what chemistry was. He caused a sensation when he declared that he had seduced Katherine Doughty and that the sealed package given to Gosford, the contents of which he earlier claimed not to recall, contained instructions to be followed in the event of her pregnancy. Rohan McWilliam, in his chronicle of the affair, comments that from that point on the Tichborne family were fighting not only for their estates but for Katherine Doughty's honour.
### Collapse of the case
On 7 July the court adjourned for four months. When it resumed, Ballantine called more witnesses, including Bogle and Francis Baigent, a close family friend. Hawkins contended that Bogle and Baigent were feeding the Claimant with information, but in cross-examination he could not dent their belief that the Claimant was genuine. In January 1872 Coleridge began the case for the defence with a speech during which he categorised the Claimant as comparable with "the great impostors of history". He intended to prove that the Claimant was Arthur Orton. He had over 200 witnesses lined up, but it transpired that few were required. Lord Bellew, who had known Roger Tichborne at Stonyhurst, testified that Roger had distinctive body tattoos which the Claimant did not possess. On 4 March the jury notified the judge that they had heard enough and were ready to reject the Claimant's suit. Having ascertained that this decision was based on the evidence as a whole and not solely on the missing tattoos, Bovill ordered the Claimant's arrest on charges of perjury and committed him to Newgate Prison.
## Appeal to the public, 1872–73
From his cell in Newgate, the Claimant vowed to resume the fight as soon as he was acquitted. On 25 March 1872 he published in the Evening Standard an "Appeal to the Public", requesting financial help to meet his legal and living costs: "I appeal to every British soul who is inspired by a love of justice and fair play, and is willing to defend the weak against the strong". The Claimant had gained considerable popular support during the civil trial; his fight was perceived by many as symbolising the problems faced by the working class when seeking justice in the courts. In the wake of his appeal, support committees were formed throughout the country. When he was bailed early in April, on sureties provided by Lord Rivers and Guildford Onslow, a large crowd cheered him as he left the Old Bailey.
At a public meeting in Alresford on 14 May, Onslow reported that subscriptions to the defence fund were already pouring in and that invitations to visit and speak had been received from many towns. As the Claimant addressed meetings up and down the country, journalists following the campaign often commented on his pronounced cockney accent, suggestive of East London origins. The campaign drew in some high-level supporters, among whom was George Hammond Whalley, a controversial anti-Catholic who was MP for Peterborough. He and Onslow were sometimes incautious in their speeches; after a meeting in St James's Hall, London, on 11 December 1872, each made specific charges against the Attorney General and the Government of trying to pervert the course of justice. They were fined £100 each for contempt of court.
With few exceptions, the mainstream press was hostile to the Claimant's campaign. To counteract this, his supporters launched two short-lived newspapers, the Tichborne Gazette in May 1872 and the Tichborne News and Anti-Oppression Journal in June. The former was wholly devoted to the Claimant's cause and ran until Onslow's and Whalley's contempt convictions in December 1872. The Tichborne News, which concerned itself with a broader range of perceived injustices, closed after four months.
## Criminal case: Regina v. Castro, 1873–74
### Judges and counsel
The criminal case, to be heard in the Queen's Bench, was listed as Regina v. Castro, the name Castro being the last uncontested alias of the Claimant. Because of its expected length, the case was scheduled as a trial at bar, a device that allowed a panel rather than one judge to hear it. The president of the panel was Sir Alexander Cockburn, the Lord Chief Justice. His decision to hear this case was controversial, since during the civil case he had publicly denounced the Claimant as a perjurer and a slanderer. Cockburn's co-judges were Sir John Mellor and Sir Robert Lush, experienced Queen's Bench justices.
The prosecution team was largely that which had opposed the Claimant in the civil case, minus Coleridge. Hawkins led the team, his main assistants being Charles Bowen and James Mathew. The Claimant's team was significantly weaker; he would not re-engage Ballantine and his other civil case lawyers declined to act for him again. Others refused the case, possibly because they knew they would have to present evidence concerning the seduction of Katherine Doughty. The Claimant's backers eventually engaged Edward Kenealy, an Irish lawyer of acknowledged gifts but known eccentricity. Kenealy had previously featured in several prominent defences, including those of the poisoner William Palmer and the leaders of the 1867 Fenian Rising. He was assisted by undistinguished juniors: Patrick MacMahon, an Irish MP who was frequently absent, and the young and inexperienced Cooper Wyld. Kenealy's task was made more difficult when several of his upper-class witnesses refused to appear, perhaps afraid of the ridicule they anticipated from the Crown's lawyers. Other important witnesses from the civil case, including Moore, Baigent and Lipscombe, would not give evidence at the criminal trial.
### Trial
The trial, one of the lengthiest cases heard in an English court, began on 21 April 1873 and lasted until 28 February 1874, occupying 188 court days. The tone was dominated by Kenealy's confrontational style; his personal attacks extended not only to witnesses but to the Bench and led to frequent clashes with Cockburn. Under the legal rules that then applied to criminal cases, the Claimant, though present in court, was not allowed to testify. Away from the court he revelled in his celebrity status; the American writer Mark Twain, who was then in London, attended an event at which the Claimant was present and "thought him a rather fine and stately figure". Twain observed that the company were "educated men, men moving in good society. ... It was 'Sir Roger', always 'Sir Roger' on all hands, no one withheld the title".
Altogether, Hawkins called 215 witnesses, including numbers from France, Melipilla, Australia and Wapping, who testified either that the Claimant was not Roger Tichborne or that he was Arthur Orton. A handwriting expert swore that the Claimant's writing resembled Orton's but not Roger Tichborne's. The entire story of rescue by the Osprey was, Hawkins asserted, a fraud. A ship of that name had arrived in Melbourne in July 1854 but did not correspond to the Claimant's description. Furthermore, the Claimant had provided the wrong name for Osprey's captain, and the names he gave for two of Osprey's crew were found to belong to members of the crew of the Middleton, the ship which had landed Orton at Hobart. No mention of a rescue had been found in Osprey's log or in the Melbourne harbourmaster's records. Giving evidence on the contents of the sealed packet, Gosford revealed that it contained information regarding the disposition of certain properties, but nothing relating to Katherine Doughty's seduction or pregnancy.
Kenealy's defence was that the Claimant was victim of a conspiracy which encompassed the Catholic Church, the government and the legal establishment. He frequently sought to demolish witnesses' character, as with Lord Bellew, whose reputation he destroyed by revealing details of the peer's adultery. Kenealy's own witnesses included Bogle and Biddulph, who remained steadfast, but more sensational testimony came from a sailor called Jean Luie, who claimed that he had been on the Osprey during the rescue mission. Luie identified the Claimant as "Mr Rogers", one of six survivors picked up and taken to Melbourne. On investigation Luie was found to be an impostor, a former prisoner who had been in England at the time of the Bella'''s sinking. He was convicted of perjury and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment.
### Summing-up, verdict and sentence
After closing addresses from Kenealy and Hawkins, Cockburn began summing-up on 29 January 1874. His speech was prefaced by a severe denunciation of Kenealy's conduct, "the longest, severest and best merited rebuke ever administered from the Bench to a member of the bar" according to the trial's chronicler John Morse. The tone of the summing-up was partisan, frequently drawing the jury's attention to the Claimant's "gross and astonishing ignorance" of things he would certainly know if he were Roger Tichborne. Cockburn rejected the Claimant's version of the sealed package contents and all imputations against Katherine Doughty's honour. Of Cockburn's peroration, Morse remarked that "never was a more resolute determination manifested [by a judge] to control the result". While much of the press applauded Cockburn's forthrightness, his summing-up was also criticised as "a Niagara of condemnation" rather than an impartial review.
The jury retired at noon on Saturday 28 February, and returned to the court within 30 minutes. Their verdict declared that the Claimant was not Roger Tichborne, that he had not seduced Katherine Doughty, and that he was indeed Arthur Orton. He was thus convicted of perjury. The jury added a condemnation of Kenealy's conduct during the trial. After the judges refused his request to address the court, the Claimant was sentenced to two consecutive terms of seven years' imprisonment. Kenealy's behaviour ended his legal career; he was expelled from the Oxford circuit mess and from Gray's Inn, so that he could no longer practise. On 2 December 1874 the Lord Chancellor revoked Kenealy's patent as a Queen's Counsel.
## Aftermath
### Popular movement
The court's verdict swelled the popular tide in favour of the Claimant. He and Kenealy were hailed as heroes, the latter as a martyr who had sacrificed his legal career. George Bernard Shaw, writing much later, highlighted the paradox whereby the Claimant was perceived simultaneously as a legitimate baronet and as a working-class man denied his legal rights by a ruling elite. In April 1874 Kenealy launched a political organisation, the "Magna Charta Association", with a broad agenda that reflected some of the Chartist demands of the 1830s and 1840s. In February 1875 Kenealy fought a parliamentary by-election for Stoke-upon-Trent as "The People's Candidate", and won with a resounding majority. However, he failed to persuade the House of Commons to establish a royal commission into the Tichborne trial, his proposal securing only his own vote and the support of two non-voting tellers, against 433 opposed. Thereafter, within parliament Kenealy became a generally derided figure, and most of his campaigning was conducted elsewhere. In the years of the Tichborne movement's popularity a considerable market was created for souvenirs in the form of medallions, china figurines, teacloths and other memorabilia. However, by 1880 interest in the case had declined, and in the General Election of that year Kenealy was heavily defeated. He died of heart failure before polling closed in the election. The Magna Charta Association continued for several more years, with dwindling support; The Englishman, the newspaper founded by Kenealy during the trial, closed down in May 1886, and there is no evidence of the Association's continuing activities after that date.
### Claimant's release and final years
The Claimant was released on licence on 11 October 1884 after serving 10 years. He was much slimmer; a letter to Onslow dated May 1875 reports a loss of 148 pounds (67 kg). Throughout his imprisonment he had maintained that he was Roger Tichborne, but on release he disappointed supporters by showing no interest in the Magna Charta Association, instead signing a contract to tour with music halls and circuses. The British public's interest in him had largely waned; in 1886 he went to New York but failed to inspire any enthusiasm there and ended up working as a bartender.
He returned in 1887 to England, where, although not officially divorced from Mary Ann Bryant, he married a music hall singer, Lily Enever. In 1895, for a fee of a few hundred pounds, he confessed in The People newspaper that he was, after all, Arthur Orton. With the proceeds he opened a small tobacconist's shop in Islington; however, he quickly retracted the confession and insisted again that he was Roger Tichborne. His shop failed, as did other business attempts, and he died destitute, of heart disease, on 1 April 1898. His funeral caused a brief revival of interest; around 5,000 people attended Paddington cemetery for the burial in an unmarked pauper's grave. In what McWilliam calls "an act of extraordinary generosity" the Tichborne family allowed a card bearing the name "Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne" to be placed on the coffin before its interment. The name "Tichborne" was registered in the cemetery's records.
### Appraisal
Commentators have generally accepted the trial jury's verdict that the Claimant was Arthur Orton. However, McWilliam cites the monumental study by Douglas Woodruff (1957), in which the author posits that the Claimant could just possibly have been Roger Tichborne. Woodruff's principal argument is the sheer improbability that anyone could conceive such an imposture from scratch, at such a distance, and then implement it: "[I]t was carrying effrontery beyond the bounds of sanity if Arthur Orton embarked with a wife and retinue and crossed the world, knowing that they would all be destitute if he did not succeed in convincing a woman he had never met and knew nothing about first-hand, that he was her son".
In 1876, while the Claimant was serving his prison sentence, interest was briefly raised by the claims of William Cresswell, an inmate of a Sydney lunatic asylum, that he was Arthur Orton. There was circumstantial evidence that indicated some connection with Orton, and the Claimant's supporters campaigned to have Cresswell brought to England. Nothing came of this, although the question of Cresswell's possible identity remained a matter of dispute for years. In 1884 a Sydney court found the matter undecided, and ruled that the status quo should be maintained; Cresswell stayed in the asylum. Shortly before his death in 1904 he was visited by the contemporaneous Lady Tichborne, who found no physical resemblance to any member of the Tichborne family.
Attempts have been made to reconcile some of the troubling uncertainties and contradictions within the case. To explain the degree of facial resemblance (which even Cockburn accepted) of the Claimant to the Tichborne family, Onslow suggested in The Englishman that Orton's mother, a woman named Mary Kent, was an illegitimate daughter of Sir Henry Tichborne, Roger Tichborne's grandfather. An alternative story has Mary Kent being seduced by James Tichborne, making Orton and Roger half-brothers. Other versions have Orton and Roger as companions in crime in Australia, with Orton killing Roger and assuming his identity. The Claimant's daughter by Mary Ann Bryant, Teresa Mary Agnes, maintained that her father confessed to her that he had killed Arthur Orton and thus could not disclose details of his Australian years. There is no direct evidence for any of these theories. Teresa continued to proclaim her identity as a Tichborne daughter, and in 1924 was imprisoned for making threats and demands for money to the family.
Woodruff submits that the legal verdicts, although fair given the evidence before the courts, have not fully resolved the "great doubt" that Cockburn admitted hung over the case. Woodruff wrote in 1957: "Probably for ever, now, its key long since lost... a mystery remains". A 1998 article in The Catholic Herald suggested that DNA profiling might resolve the mystery. The enigma has launched numerous retellings of the story in book and film, including the short story "Tom Castro, the Implausible Imposter" from Jorge Luis Borges's Universal History of Infamy, and David Yates's 1998 film The Tichborne Claimant. Thus, Woodruff concludes, "the man who lost himself still walks in history, with no other name than that which the common voice of his day accorded him: the Claimant".
## See also
- Bhawal case, dealing with a famous case of suspected impersonation in British India.
- "The Principal and the Pauper", an episode of The Simpsons'' inspired by the Tichborne case.
- Little Tich, a 4-foot-6-inch-tall music hall comedian, nicknamed after his supposed physical likeness to the Tichborne Claimant. The terms "titchy" or "titch" were later derived from "Little Tich" and are used to describe things that are small.
|
37,920,930 |
Thirty Flights of Loving
| 1,169,391,678 |
2012 adventure video game
|
[
"2012 video games",
"Blendo Games games",
"Commercial video games with freely available source code",
"Kickstarter-funded video games",
"MacOS games",
"Open-source video games",
"Single-player video games",
"Video game sequels",
"Video games developed in the United States",
"Video games scored by Chris Remo",
"Video games with commentaries",
"Walking simulators",
"Windows games"
] |
Thirty Flights of Loving is a first-person adventure video game developed by Brendon Chung under the name Blendo Games. It was published in August 2012 for Microsoft Windows, in November 2012 for OS X, and in December 2021 for Linux. The game is a non-direct sequel to Gravity Bone (2008) with the same unnamed spy as the main character. It follows three people as they prepare for an alcohol heist and the aftermath of the operation.
Thirty Flights of Loving was developed as part of the Kickstarter campaign for the revival of the Idle Thumbs podcast and included a free copy of its predecessor. The game employs a modified version of id Software's 1997-era id Tech 2 engine—originally used for Quake 2—and incorporates music composed by Idle Thumbs member Chris Remo. It received generally favorable reviews from video game media outlets, scoring 88 out of 100 on aggregate website Metacritic. A follow-up, Quadrilateral Cowboy, was released on July 25, 2016.
## Gameplay
Thirty Flights of Loving is a first-person adventure video game that is estimated to take about 15 minutes on average to complete. Using the WASD keys and mouse, the player controls the main character, an unnamed spy who participates in an alcohol-smuggling operation. The player works alongside non-playable characters Anita, a demolitions expert, and Borges, a forger. The game follows the group as they prepare for a heist and experience its aftermath. The robbery is omitted from the game, although it is revealed that it went wrong.
Unlike Gravity Bone, Thirty Flights of Loving employs non-linear storytelling, forcing the player to piece together the narrative. During gameplay, objectives and guidance are provided through the player's interactions with objects. The player has little control over the game mechanics and is only able to move freely and pick up objects as needed to progress. Several optional actions, such as drinking alcohol, are available at several stages of the game.
### Story
Thirty Flights of Loving begins with the player walking through a small corridor where individual gameplay elements such as movement and key allocations are explained. After walking through a bar and several more corridors, Anita and Borges are introduced. All three characters then exit on a plane. A smash cut skips the narrative forward to a scene with Anita and Borges lying shot in a room full of crates. The player character lifts Borges and takes him outside to what looks to be an airport. The player is then taken to a dark room with Anita sitting on a chair, peeling and eating oranges. After walking through another corridor, Anita, Borges, and the player join a wedding.
Anita and the player get drunk on a table while the rest of the characters start dancing and flying across the room. Then the player is taken again to the room where Anita was peeling oranges, and then back to the room where both she and Borges were lying shot. The player is then shown leaving the airport carrying Borges on a luggage cart. They arrive at a small place where the gunfight sequence takes place, followed by the motorcycle ride sequence, which ends with a crash that leads the player into a museum. In this area, there are several plaques showing the game's name and credits. The player leaves the area and goes into a new one where Bernoulli's principle about low and high air pressures is explained. Then, the player is again moved to the motorcycle sequence, where the game ends.
## Development
Thirty Flights of Loving was developed by Brendon Chung's video game studio Blendo Games. Chung, who worked as a level designer for Pandemic Studios, has contributed to the development of Full Spectrum Warrior and Lord of the Rings: Conquest. Thirty Flights of Loving was created using a modified version of KMQuake II, a port of id Software's id Tech 2, the graphics engine for Quake 2. It incorporates a gameplay enhancement add-on named Lazarus, developed by David Hyde and Mad Dog. Chung acknowledged that although he has worked with newer, "powerful and flexible" engines, he preferred the older engine because it was released as an open-source platform, "so you can redistribute it for free." The source code of Thirty Flights of Loving itself has been released under version 2 of the GNU General Public License, making it free software.
The game was first conceived as a prototype to Gravity Bone, and was scrapped because it was "too dialogue heavy." However, Chung revived the idea after being contacted by Idle Thumbs to develop a game for their Kickstarter campaign. The main development phase, in which content creation took place, was finished within three months. Several more months were spent polishing the game and fixing software bugs. Chung brought multiple existing assets from Gravity Bone to develop Thirty Flights of Loving, and used a diverse set of tools to create the elements of the game. Blender was picked for the creation of models, while Audacity and Adobe Photoshop were used for audio and texture work. Another tool, GtkRadiant, was used to create the game's levels.
Chung developed Thirty Flights of Loving's environment as a way to present the criminal nature of the group. He intentionally avoided the use of voice-overs, and instead modeled the environment to bridge "the disconnect between the player's knowledge and the player's character's knowledge." Characters Anita and Borges were to be introduced using dialogue, but this was removed. However, montages were later added after Idle Thumbs' crew expressed concerns that the characters' relationships were unclear. Chung included a system to automate the generation of non-playable characters to replace the process of manually scripting every person in the game. He explained that although it allows characters to "randomly wander near waypoints," the software is "occasionally glitchy and behaves badly around staircases." This automation code was originally developed for a surveillance game prototype "that never panned out."
A first-person meal simulator was designed for Thirty Flights of Loving. The sequence included the main characters "enjoy[ing] street noodles." However, the idea was scrapped and replaced with the motorcycle ride featured in the final version. The gunfight scene portrayed in the game was supposed to have a "musical rhythm," inspired by the film Koyaanisqatsi and Baraka. The last level of the game is modeled from the French National Museum of Natural History. Chung explained that when developing levels, he first spends time researching and "learning how things work." He elaborated that researching is important in "how it gives specificity and grounding" to a game. Thirty Flights of Loving is the seventh "Citizen Abel" game developed by Chung. The first two games were coded in 1999, while the following three were written between 2000 and 2004. The sixth game in the series, Gravity Bone (2008), became the first to be published. On the Tone Control podcast, he spoke about how every game he has produced, including Thirty Flights of Loving, takes place in the same shared universe.
Thirty Flights of Loving includes references and Easter eggs, as did Gravity Bone. Films such as Three Days of the Condor and The Conversation, film directors Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino, games such as Zork and Saints Row: The Third, and animated shows like Animaniacs and TaleSpin are referenced in the campaign. Unlike most of Chung's previous games, Thirty Flights of Loving was not framed around a certain musical composition. It incorporates music composed by Idle Thumbs member Chris Remo, while additional audio was provided by Jared Emerson-Johnson and A.J. Locascio. It makes use of Soundsnap's sound library.
## Release
Thirty Flights of Loving was announced in February 2012 as part of the Kickstarter campaign for Idle Thumbs' podcast. The Idle Thumbs team talked to Chung about a possible sequel to Gravity Bone, which was offered as one of the rewards of their Kickstarter campaign. Those who supported the campaign received Thirty Flights of Loving before its official release in August 2012. They also gained access to an exclusive "Goldblum mode" that was not part of the general release. It replaced the character model with ones resembling actor Jeff Goldblum. The game, alongside a free copy of Gravity Bone, was made available to early supporters in July 2012 and to the general public a month later via Steam. An OS X release followed in November 2012, with a Linux version following in December 2021.
## Reception
Thirty Flights of Loving received generally favorable reviews upon release. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the game received an average score of 88 out of 100, based on 10 reviews. Destructoid's Patrick Hancock awarded the game 9.5 out of 10, stating that "you'll never look at linear storytelling the same way again."
GameSpot's Carolyn Petit wrote that "the pleasure of Thirty Flights of Loving emerges from the things left unshown", allowing the player to infer and imagine the events, such as the heist itself, that are not otherwise shown. Graham Smith of PC Gamer extolled the minimalist storytelling, asserting that Thirty Flights of Loving "tells a better story in 13 minutes than most games do in 13 hours". Mark Brown from Wired UK classified the game as a "brassy, super-short, cubic heist drama," and stated that Chung "spins a memorable yarn, delivers it with confidence and panache [...] with a 15-year-old engine, without voice acting, in 20 minutes."
IGN's Nathan Meunier said the game "gets off to a fascinating start before completely throwing any and all expectations you might form during its first few minutes into the wood chipper." British video game magazine Edge found Thirty Flights of Loving to be "an intriguing psychological thriller that feels like Wes Anderson taking on Hitchcock." The magazine added that the game had a "wonderfully ambiguous" story, crafted by replacing dialogue with "artful framing and shrewd gestures, and booting out cutscenes in favour of prickly jump-cuts." Thirty Flights of Loving was a Narrative Award finalist at the 2013 Independent Games Festival. However, Richard Hofmeier's Cart Life (2011) became the winner.
## Sequel
A follow-up to Thirty Flights of Loving, Quadrilateral Cowboy, was developed by Chung. The game takes place in the same universe as Gravity Bone and Thirty Flights of Loving but is not a direct sequel. It follows a hacker who oversees agents who infiltrate buildings and steal documents. Unlike its predecessors, Quadrilateral Cowboy uses id Software's id Tech 4 engine—originally used for Doom 3. According to Chung, the new engine provides "a lot more modern functionality" than the earlier engine used in the first two games.
|
811,718 |
Coffin Stone
| 1,165,187,935 |
Archaeological artifact in Kent, England
|
[
"Archaeological sites in Kent",
"Megalithic monuments in England",
"Stone Age sites in Kent",
"Tonbridge and Malling"
] |
The Coffin Stone, also known as the Coffin and the Table Stone, is a large sarsen stone at the foot of Blue Bell Hill near Aylesford in the south-eastern English county of Kent. Now lying horizontally, the stone probably once stood upright nearby. Various archaeologists have argued that the stone was part of a now-destroyed chambered long barrow constructed in the fourth millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period.
If a chambered long barrow did indeed previously exist on the site, it would have been built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Long-barrow building was an architectural tradition widespread across Neolithic Europe. It consisted of various localized regional variants; one of these was in the vicinity of the River Medway, examples of which are now known as the Medway Megaliths. The Coffin Stone lies on the eastern side of the river, not far from the chambered long barrows of Little Kit's Coty House, Kit's Coty House, and the (now destroyed) Smythe's Megalith. Three other examples, the Coldrum Long Barrow, Addington Long Barrow, and Chestnuts Long Barrow, remain on the western side of the river.
The Coffin Stone is a rectangular slab lying flat that measures 4.42 metres (14 ft 6 in) in length, 2.59 metres (8 ft 6 in) in breadth, and about 0.61 metres (2 ft) in width. Two smaller stones lie nearby and another large slab is now located atop it. In the 1830s it was reported that local farmers found human bones near the stone. An archaeological excavation of the site led by Paul Garwood took place in 2008–09; it found that the megalith was placed in its present location only in the 15th or 16th centuries. The archaeologists found no evidence of a chambered long barrow at the location, and suggested that the Coffin Stone might once have stood upright in the vicinity.
## Location
The Coffin Stone is in Great Tottington Farm, which is now used as a vineyard. As of 2005, the site was not signposted, but could be reached via a stile along the Pilgrims' Way. The Coffin Stone is situated about 400 metres (1,300 ft) north-west of Little Kit's Coty House. It is also a short distance north of the Tottington springhead.
## Context
The Early Neolithic was a revolutionary period of British history. Between 4500 and 3800 BCE, it saw a widespread change in lifestyle as the communities living in the British Isles adopted agriculture as their primary form of subsistence, abandoning the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that had characterised the preceding Mesolithic period. This came about through contact with continental societies; it is unclear to what extent this can be attributed to an influx of migrants or to indigenous Mesolithic Britons adopting agricultural technologies from continental Europe. The region of modern Kent was a key area for the arrival of continental settlers and visitors, because of its position on the estuary of the River Thames and its proximity to the continent.
Britain was largely forested in this period; widespread forest clearance did not occur in Kent until the Late Bronze Age (c.1000 to 700 BCE). Environmental data from the vicinity of the White Horse Stone, a putatively prehistoric monolith near the River Medway, supports the idea that the area was still largely forested in the Early Neolithic, covered by a woodland of oak, ash, hazel/alder and Maloideae (apples and their allies). Throughout most of Britain, there is little evidence of cereal grain farming or permanent dwellings from this period, leading archaeologists to believe that the Early Neolithic economy on the island was largely pastoral, relying on herding cattle, with people living a nomadic or semi-nomadic life.
### Medway Megaliths
Across Western Europe, the Early Neolithic marked the first period in which humans built monumental structures. These included chambered long barrows, rectangular or oval earthen tumuli that had a chamber built into one end. Some of these chambers were constructed out of timber, and others were built using large stones, now known as "megaliths". Long barrows often served as tombs, housing the physical remains of the dead within their chamber. Individuals were rarely buried alone in the Early Neolithic, instead being interred in collective burials with other members of their community. Chambered tombs were built all along the Western European seaboard during the Early Neolithic, from southeastern Spain to southern Sweden, taking in most of the British Isles; the architectural tradition was introduced to Britain from continental Europe in the first half of the fourth millennium BCE. There are stone buildings—like Göbekli Tepe in modern Turkey—that predate them, but the chambered long barrows constitute humanity's first widespread tradition of construction using stone.
Although now all in a ruinous state and not retaining their original appearance, at the time of construction the Medway Megaliths would have been some of the largest and most visually imposing Early Neolithic funerary monuments in Britain. Grouped along the River Medway as it cuts through the North Downs, they constitute the most southeasterly group of megalithic monuments in the British Isles, and the only megalithic group in eastern England. The archaeologists Brian Philp and Mike Dutto deemed the Medway Megaliths to be "some of the most interesting and well known" archaeological sites in Kent, while the archaeologist Paul Ashbee described them as "the most grandiose and impressive structures of their kind in southern England".
The Medway Megaliths can be divided into two separate clusters: one to the west of the River Medway and the other on Blue Bell Hill to the east, between 8 and 10 kilometres (5.0 and 6.2 mi) apart. The western group includes Coldrum Long Barrow, Addington Long Barrow, and the Chestnuts Long Barrow. The eastern group consists of Smythe's Megalith, Kit's Coty House, Little Kit's Coty House, and several other stones that might have once been parts of chambered tombs, most notably the White Horse Stone. It is not known if they were all built at the same time, and it is not known if they each served the same function or whether there was a hierarchy in their usage.
The Medway long barrows all conformed to the same general design plan, and are all aligned on an east to west axis. Each had a stone chamber at the eastern end of the mound, and they each probably had a stone facade flanking the entrance. They had internal heights of up to 3.0 metres (10 feet), making them taller than most other chambered long barrows in Britain. The chambers were constructed from sarsen sandstone, a dense, hard, and durable stone that occurs naturally throughout Kent, having formed out of sand from the Eocene epoch. Early Neolithic builders would have selected blocks from the local area, and then transported them to the site of the monument to be erected.
These common architectural features among the Medway Megaliths indicate a strong regional cohesion with no direct parallels elsewhere in the British Isles. Nevertheless, as with other regional groupings of Early Neolithic long barrows—such as the Cotswold-Severn group in south-western Britain—there are also various idiosyncrasies in the different monuments, such as Coldrum's rectilinear shape, the Chestnut Long Barrow's facade, and the long, thin mounds at Addington and Kit's Coty. These variations might have been caused by the tombs being altered and adapted over the course of their use; in this scenario, the monuments would be composite structures.
The builders of these monuments were probably influenced by pre-existing tomb-shrines they were aware of. Whether those people had grown up locally, or moved into the Medway area from elsewhere is not known. Based on a stylistic analysis of their architecture, the archaeologist Stuart Piggott thought that the plan behind the Medway Megaliths had originated in the area around the Low Countries; Glyn Daniel thought their design derived from Scandinavia, John H. Evans thought Germany, and Ronald F. Jessup suggested an influence from the Cotswold-Severn group. Ashbee found their close clustering reminiscent of the megalithic tomb-shrine traditions of continental Northern Europe, and emphasised that the Medway Megaliths were a regional manifestation of a tradition widespread across Early Neolithic Europe. He concluded that a precise place of origin was "impossible to indicate" with the available evidence.
## Description
The Coffin Stone is a large rectangular slab. In the 1870s, it was measured as being 4.42 metres (14 ft 6 in) in length, 2.59 metres (8 ft 6 in) in breadth, and about 0.61 metres (2 ft) in width. The archaeologist Timothy Champion suggested that "the Coffin Stone" was "an appropriate name" for the megalith given its appearance. Given the size of the megalith, it is likely that—had this been part of a chamber—the chamber could have measured as much as 3.75 metres (12.3 ft) in height and would have been the largest of all the known Medway Megaliths. There may have been a stone façade in front of the chamber, and if so, these may be the stones now found in the Tottington's western springhead. At some point in the twentieth century, another large sarsen slab was placed on top of the Coffin Stone.
In Evans' view, the nineteenth-century discovery of human remains at the site "strongly suggests" that the Coffin Stone was the remnant of a destroyed chambered long barrow. Jessup agreed, suggesting that "in all probability" it was part of such a monument. Some archaeologists have argued that evidence of a barrow could be visibly identified; Ashbee noted that a mound was visible "in much reduced form until the 1950s but can today [2005] hardly be traced". In 2007, Champion noted that the trace of the mound could still be seen. Had this once been a long barrow then it may have been flanked by kerbstones; various stones found nearby may have once been these. Had there been a barrow, it is likely that ditches would have flanked its sides. Archaeological investigation in the 2000s found no clear evidence of a chambered long barrow having stood on the site.
## Antiquarian and archaeological investigation
### Antiquarian descriptions
The antiquarian William Stukeley made note of the Coffin Stone in his posthumously published 1776 work Itinerarium Curiosum. This book contained the first published illustration of the monument. Stukeley had been alerted to the site by his friend Hercules Ayleway, who in a 1722 letter told Stukeley of "a large stone 15-foot long, called the coffin". The site was next described by John Thorpe in his 1788 book Custumale Roffense; he believed that it was Stukeley himself who had given it the name of the "coffin stone". Thorpe visited the site and provided two illustrations of it; one of these showed a spindly tree growing from around the stone.
Circa 1840, the antiquarian Beale Poste visited the site and drew a sketch of it. In his unpublished manuscript on Kentish antiquities, he reported that in 1838 or 1839 a sack full of human remains had been recovered close to the Coffin Stone. In 1871, E. H. W. Dunkin provided an account of the site in The Reliquary. He related that as well as being known as "The Coffin", it was also called "The Table Stone". He believed that it had once stood upright on that same spot, representing "a sepulchral memorial or mênhir of some ancient British chieftain". Dunkin recorded that human remains—including two human skulls, other bones, and charcoal—had been found nearby during the 1836 removal of a hedge that "concealed more than one-half of the stone". He also noted that fragments of Roman pottery had been found nearby, and that local farmers had been moving sarsen blocks to the adjacent springhead; "more than fifty blocks, large and small, lie about the yard". In 1872, James Fergusson referenced the site in his Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries; Their Age and Uses, referring to the presence of "two obelisks, known to country people as the coffin-stones—probably from their shape".
In 1893, the antiquarian George Payne described the monument in his Collectanea Cantiana, noting that locally it was known as both the Coffin Stone and the General's Stone. Ashbee later suggested that Payne was actually confusing the Coffin Stone with the General's Stone, which was a separate megalith found several hundred metres away, in the same field as Kit's Coty House. In his 1924 publication dealing with Kent, the archaeologist O. G. S. Crawford, then working as the archaeological officer for the Ordnance Survey, listed the Coffin Stone alongside the other Medway Megaliths. In his 1927 book In Kentish Pilgrimland, William Coles Finch included a plate of the Coffin Stone; the photograph featured his son standing on it and shows various broken sarsens piled up at the monument's eastern end. Finch's plate was the first published photograph of the megalith, and was likely also the last published depiction of it before another large sarsen was placed over it. Finch measured the sarsen and found it to be wider than Thorpe had reported, also making note of plough damage and breakages. In a 1946 article on the folklore involving the Medway Megaliths, Evans noted that the Coffin Stone, like several other megalithic features in the area, was associated with a burial following the fifth-century Battle of Aylesford. The idea that one or more of these monuments had been linked to the battle was first mooted by early modern antiquarians, before entering local folklore.
### Archaeological investigation
In 2005, Ashbee noted that he had raised the issue of the site's preservation with English Heritage and that their representative had informed him that they would not consider according it legal protection because they thought it a natural feature. The idea that the stone might have been natural had previously been voiced by the archaeologist Glyn Daniel on his visit to the site. Ashbee commented that "it has, however, for long been manifest that English Heritage is more concerned with commercialisation than affording appropriate protection to our national monuments".
Ashbee noted that any evidence for a chambered tomb at the site might be ascertained through geophysics or excavation. Led by the archaeologist Paul Garwood, a programme of field surveys, geophysical research, and excavations took place at the site as part of the Medway Valley Prehistoric Landscapes Project during 2008 and 2009. This found evidence for prehistoric activity in the vicinity of the megalith but was unable to accurately date these archaeological features. The investigators established that there was no evidence that a chambered long barrow had once stood there. They determined that the stone had been moved to its present location at some point in the post-medieval period (1450 to 1600). There was a large hollow in the chalk nearby which was akin to that found by excavators near to the Cuckoo Stone in Wiltshire; the archaeologists interpreted this as an extraction hollow, suggesting that the Coffin Stone had once stood upright at that spot.
|
6,112,615 |
Deep Throat (The X-Files episode)
| 1,170,099,471 | null |
[
"1993 American television episodes",
"Television episodes directed by Daniel Sackheim",
"Television episodes set in Idaho",
"Television episodes written by Chris Carter (screenwriter)",
"The X-Files (season 1) episodes",
"United States Air Force in fiction"
] |
"Deep Throat" is the second episode of the first season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. This episode premiered on the Fox network on September 17, 1993. Written by series creator Chris Carter and directed by Daniel Sackheim, the episode introduces several elements which became staples of the series' mythology.
In this television series, FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. Mulder believes in paranormal phenomena, while the skeptical Scully attempts to discredit them. In this episode, the pair investigate a possible conspiracy in the United States Air Force, and Mulder meets a mysterious informant who warns him to stay away from the case. Undeterred, Mulder continues and comes closer to the truth about extraterrestrial life than ever before, only to have his progress stalled and findings taken from him, yet again.
The episode introduces the character of Deep Throat, played by Jerry Hardin, who serves as Mulder's informant in the first season. The character was inspired by the historical Deep Throat and serves to bridge the gap between the protagonists and the conspirators they would investigate. The episode itself focuses on common elements of ufology, in a setting reminiscent of Area 51 and Nellis Air Force Base. It containes several special effects that Chris Carter later described as "good, given the [series'] restrictions"; although he singled out the scenes featuring blinking lights as being poorly executed. In its initial U.S. broadcast, "Deep Throat" was viewed by approximately 6.9 million households and 11.1 million viewers and attracted positive reviews from critics.
## Plot
In southwestern Idaho, near Ellens Air Force Base, military police raid the home of Colonel Robert Budahas, who has barricaded himself inside after stealing a military vehicle. The authorities find Budahas trembling and covered in rashes.
Four months later, FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) meet at a Washington bar to discuss the Budahas case. Mulder explains that Budahas, a test pilot, has not been seen since the raid and the military will not comment on his condition; the FBI has refused to investigate. Mulder claims that six other pilots are missing at the base, which is subject to rumors about experimental aircraft. While using the bar's restroom, Mulder is approached by a mysterious informant named "Deep Throat" (Jerry Hardin), who cautions him to avoid the case. He claims that Mulder is under surveillance, which later proves to be true.
Mulder and Scully travel to Idaho and meet with Budahas' wife, Anita, who claims her husband exhibited erratic behavior before his disappearance. She tells them about a neighbor - whom the agents visit - whose husband, also a test pilot who has been behaving oddly. Scully makes an appointment with the base's director, Colonel Kissell, but he refuses to talk when they visit his home. They are subsequently approached by Paul Mossinger, who identifies himself as a local reporter and refers them to a local UFO-themed diner; there, they discuss UFOs with the owner, who believes she has witnessed several nearby.
Visiting the base that night, the agents witness a mysterious aircraft performing seemingly impossible maneuvers in the sky. They flee when a black helicopter approaches, seemingly in pursuit of Emil and Zoe, a trespassing teenage couple. As Mulder treats Emil and Zoe to a meal at the diner, they tell the agents about the lights and how they believe the UFOs are launched from another nearby base. Meanwhile, Budahas is returned to his home with no memory of what happened. After leaving the diner, Mulder and Scully are confronted by black-suited agents, who destroy the photographs they have taken and order them to leave town.
An indignant Mulder sneaks onto the base with help from Emil and Zoe. He sees a triangular craft fly overhead and then is captured by soldiers who tamper with his memory. Meanwhile, Scully re-encounters Mossinger, whom she discovers is actually a security operative for the base. At gunpoint, she forces him to guide her to the base and exchanges him for Mulder. Having been denied the truth about the base, Mulder and Scully return to Washington. Days later, Mulder encounters Deep Throat while jogging at a local track. Mulder asks if "they" really are present on Earth; Deep Throat responds that "they have been here for a long, long time".
## Production
### Conception and pre-production
This episode marked Hardin's first appearance as Deep Throat. Series creator Chris Carter said the character was inspired by the historical Deep Throat, an informant who leaked information about the FBI's investigation of the Watergate scandal to journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. Also cited as an influence was X, the character portrayed by Donald Sutherland in the 1991 Oliver Stone film JFK. Carter created the character to bridge the gap between Mulder and Scully and the shadowy conspirators working against them; describing Deep Throat as a man "who works in some level of government that we have no idea exists". Carter was drawn to Hardin after seeing him in The Firm, and described the casting as an "easy choice". Hardin flew to Vancouver every few weeks to film his scenes. Carter called Hardin's portrayal "very, very good".
According to Carter, it was evident that The X-Files was a "series in making" during this episode. The inspiration of the episode was ufology. Believers in aliens have long thought that Area 51 and Nellis Air Force Base, both located in Nevada, have alien technology captured during 1947's Roswell UFO incident. The name Ellens Air Force Base was derived from the name of Carter's college girlfriend, whose last name was Ellens. The surname for the two guest characters, Budahas, came from a high school friend of Carter. The story's military project was inspired by a rumor that the United States Air Force had started a project named the Aurora Project. Carter said he remembered people talking about this rumor and that its inclusion in the story was a reference to it. Duchovny and Anderson had never used a gun or held one before, so they were trained on how to hold them properly.
### Filming
The scenes in which Mulder infiltrates the air base were shot at a real U.S. airbase. With a small budget and television schedule, Carter said the effects seemed "good, given the restrictions" they faced. The UFO was digitally constructed, based around what visual effects supervisor Mat Beck described as a "sort of disco light rig" that was rented from a "party supplier". Towards the end of filming the night-time scenes, the sun was beginning to rise, forcing crew member John Bartley to rig the angles to keep the scenes as dark as possible. One scene, in which Mulder infiltrates the base, had already been rewritten to change its daytime setting to night; the rising sun forced the scene to be filmed as originally conceived.
The house used for the exterior shots of the Budahas residence was reused in Carter's next series, Millennium, as the home of protagonist Frank Black. The house's owner was a flight attendant who frequently met cast and crew members as they traveled in and out of Vancouver. The initial scene with Duchovny and Anderson in the bar was shot at a Vancouver restaurant called The Meat Market, which according to Carter was a much "divier location than the production designers would have you believe". The Meat Market was the only bar the crew could find that had not been renovated in the wake of Expo 86 and retained a "well-travelled" feel. It later appeared in the third season episode "Piper Maru". The roadside diner used for interior shots of the "Flying Saucer Diner" was remote enough from the other filming locations that a bus was made available to transport crew members, to save on travel expenses. Only key grip Al Campbell made use of this bus service, causing producers to abandon the idea until the fourth season episode "Herrenvolk".
Guest star Seth Green said that despite being cast as "stoner kid" Emil, and having "cornered the market on the affable stoner in TV and film", he had never used cannabis before. Green related that his first day on the set came just after Duchovny had finished filming his final scene; Green was impressed with Duchovny's demeanour and improvisational acting, and added that the two "just goofed off the whole time".
### Post-production
Carter claimed that the scenes with the flashing lights in the sky were the "worst effects we've ever done", given limits on money and time; he also commented that special effects were still in their infancy. Beck was the special effects producer and supervisor during season one; he and Carter unsuccessfully tried to make the special effects look three dimensional and "better". According to Carter, the result looked like a "kind of hi-tech Pong game".
This episode marks Mark Snow's debut as a solo composer for the series. Carter stated he and the production crew were "fearful" of using too much music in the episode, and the first season as a whole. Anderson's voiceover narration towards the end of the episode was inserted after complaints from Fox executives, who desired more closure. The executives felt that viewers were not supposed to be "confused" after watching and must have at least a slight idea of what was going on. The voiceovers became a common technique for the remainder of the series.
## Themes
Mossinger's warning to Mulder that some truths should be kept hidden from the public has been cited by scholars as representing the difficulty of forcing large organizations to take responsibility for wrongdoing. The episode's final revelation, that aliens have been on Earth "for a long, long time", has been cited as following a trend of post-futurism established by science fiction cinema in the 1980s. This trend has replaced traditional science fiction topics such as space exploration with themes inspired by the Watergate scandal and the spread of conspiracy theories.
## Broadcast and reception
"Deep Throat" premiered on Fox on September 17, 1993, and was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on September 24, 1994. The episode's initial U.S. broadcast was viewed by approximately 6.9 million households and 11.1 million viewers. It earned a Nielsen rating of 7.3, with a 14 share, meaning that roughly 7.3 percent of all television-equipped households, and 14 percent of households watching television, were tuned in to the episode. The episode was released on VHS in 1996, alongside "Pilot"; as well being released on DVD as part of the complete first season. It was later included on The X-Files Mythology, Volume 1 – Abduction, a DVD collection containing episodes centered on the series' mythology.
In a first season retrospective in Entertainment Weekly, the episode was rated a B+, with praise for Hardin's "world-weary" performance, though the review noted that the "querulous, ominous tone" of the episode was "a little awkward, but full of promise of things to come". Adrienne Martini of the Austin Chronicle called the episode "fun to watch", describing it as "great TV"; while the San Jose Mercury News called the title character "the most interesting new character on television", also calling the episode "strange but marvellous". The Toronto Star's Mike Antonucci wrote that the episode demonstrates that Carter "can blend subtle, complicated elements with heart-pounding action", adding that "Nothing is obvious about The X-Files, in fact, except its quality". Michael Janusonis of The Beaver County Times was more critical, calling it "an acquired taste" and noting that it "sort of diddled out in the end", lacking "a completely satisfactory resolution".
Writing for The A.V. Club, Keith Phipps rated the episode an A−, finding it "almost like an extension of the pilot". Phipps felt the scene featuring Mulder's kidnapping to be "one of the scariest moments from the series' early days, as much for what it suggests as for what it shows". Writing for website Den of Geek, Matt Haigh reviewed the episode positively, praising its decision not to answer all the questions it asks. Haigh noted that "the fact that we are left as clueless about what really happened as Mulder and Scully only enhances the viewing experience", finding such mystery to be "a rare thing indeed" on network television. 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 five stars out of five, finding it to be "much more confident in its pacing and tone" than the previous episode. Shearman and Pearson felt that the episode was "a skillfully scripted story of cover-up and paranoia", and noted that "it sets up the overall themes of the show so well, it almost seems like a primer".
"Deep Throat" was cited as beginning to "set the stage for the central conflicts" of the series. IGN's Dan Iverson felt that the episode served to "open the door to the possibilities of this series"; while Tor.com's Meghan Deans noted that "although the pilot introduced the idea of government conspiracy, it's 'Deep Throat' that kicks out the edges of the canvas". The introduction of Hardin as Deep Throat in the episode was listed by Entertainment Weekly as number 37 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Television Moments" of the 1990s.
|
4,039,865 |
Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
| 1,172,940,340 |
2006 video game
|
[
"2006 video games",
"3D platform games",
"Action-adventure games",
"Amaze Entertainment games",
"BAFTA winners (video games)",
"Cooperative video games",
"Feral Interactive games",
"Game Boy Advance games",
"GameCube games",
"Games for Windows",
"J2ME games",
"Lego Star Wars",
"Lego video games",
"LucasArts games",
"MacOS games",
"Multiplayer and single-player video games",
"Nintendo DS games",
"PlayStation 2 games",
"PlayStation Portable games",
"Return of the Jedi video games",
"Star Wars (film) video games",
"Star Wars video games",
"The Empire Strikes Back video games",
"Traveller's Tales games",
"Universomo games",
"Video game sequels",
"Video games developed in the United Kingdom",
"Video games scored by David Whittaker",
"Video games set on fictional planets",
"Windows games",
"Xbox 360 games",
"Xbox games"
] |
Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy is a 2006 Lego-themed action-adventure game developed by Traveller's Tales and published by LucasArts and TT Games Publishing. It was released on 11 September 2006. Part of the Lego Star Wars series, it is based on the Star Wars science fiction media franchise and Lego Group's Lego Star Wars toy line. It follows the events of the Star Wars films A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The game allows players to assume the roles of over 50 Lego versions of characters from the film series; customized characters can also be created. Camera movement was improved from its predecessor Lego Star Wars: The Video Game and the concept of "vehicle levels" was explored more thoroughly. The game was revealed at American International Toy Fair. Promotions for the game were set up at chain stores across the United States.
Lego Star Wars II was critically and commercially successful; it has sold over 8.2 million copies worldwide as of May 2009. Critics praised the game for its comedic and "adorable" portrayal of the film series and due to preference for the original trilogy over the prequel trilogy. However, the game's low difficulty, and its Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS versions in general, were received more poorly. The game received awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and Spike TV, among others. A mobile phone adaptation, Lego Star Wars II Mobile, was later developed by Universomo, published by THQ, and released on 5 January 2007. Lego Star Wars II and its predecessor were compiled in Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, released a year later.
## Gameplay
Lego Star Wars II's gameplay is from a third-person perspective, and takes place in a 3D game world that contains objects, environments, and characters designed to resemble Lego pieces. Its gameplay – a combination of the action-adventure, platform, and sometimes puzzle genres – shares elements with that of Lego Star Wars: The Video Game (2005). While Lego Star Wars followed the events of the Prequel Trilogy: The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005), Lego Star Wars II is based on the Original Trilogy: A New Hope (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983). The game comically retells the trilogy's events using cutscenes without dialogue. The player assumes the roles of the films' characters, each of whom possesses specific weapons and abilities. At any time, a second player can join the game, by activating a second controller. During gameplay, players can collect Lego studs – small, disk-shaped objects, which serve as the game's currency. The player has a health meter, which is displayed on the game's heads-up display. The player's health is represented by four hearts; when these hearts are depleted, the player dies, and a small amount of their studs bounce away. However, they instantly respawn and can often re-collect the lost studs.
The game's central location is the Mos Eisley cantina, a spaceport bar on the planet Tatooine. At the counter, the player may use their Lego studs to purchase characters, vehicles, gameplay hints and extras, or activate cheat codes. In a small area outside the cantina, players may view collected vehicles. The game is broken into levels, which are accessed from the cantina; each film is represented by six levels, representing key locations and scenes in that film. The locations include Hoth, Bespin, Dagobah, Tatooine, the Death Star, and Endor. The game also features bonus levels. During play, the player defeats enemies, builds objects out of Lego bricks, and drives vehicles. Certain levels are played entirely while piloting vehicles, including a TIE fighter, a Snowspeeder, and the Millennium Falcon. Levels must first be played in Story Mode. This unlocks the next level as well as a Free Play mode for the recently completed level. Gameplay is identical in the two modes. However, Story Mode restricts playable characters to those followed in the film scenes the levels are based on, while Free Play-offers all those unlocked. Levels can be replayed in either mode to collect studs and secret items.
Three types of secret items are available: gold bricks, minikits, and power bricks. Within each level is hidden one power brick. When a power brick is collected, its corresponding extra, such as invincibility or stud multipliers, becomes available for purchase. Each level also contains ten hidden minikits, that is, ten pieces of a Star Wars vehicle. When all ten have been collected, the player is awarded a gold brick. Collecting a certain number of gold bricks unlocks free rewards, such as a spigot that spews out studs. Gold bricks are also awarded when levels are completed, and when a predefined number of studs is accumulated in a level; ninety-nine gold bricks are available. The vehicles represented by the minikits are displayed outside the cantina. As each vehicle is completed (all ten minikits collected), it becomes available for play in a bonus level.
### Playable characters
68 characters from the films are playable over the course of the game, including variations of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian, R2-D2, C-3PO, Darth Vader, Wicket the Ewok, and Boba Fett. Character abilities have a greater role in Lego Star Wars II than in Lego Star Wars. Certain characters armed with guns can use a grappling hook in predesignated areas. Characters wielding lightsabers can deflect projectiles, double jump and use the Force. R2-D2, C-3PO, and other droid characters are needed to open particular doors. Small characters like the Ewok and Jawa can crawl through hatches to reach otherwise inaccessible areas. Bounty hunters, such as Boba Fett, may use thermal detonators to destroy otherwise indestructible objects. Sith, like Darth Vader, can use the Force to manipulate black Lego objects. Some characters have unique abilities; for example, Chewbacca can rip enemies' arms from their sockets, Darth Vader can choke enemies with the Force, Princess Leia possesses a slap attack, and Lando Calrissian can use a kung-fu-like attack. Special abilities are often necessary to unlock secrets, and story mode does not always provide characters with needed abilities. This means that some secrets can be found only in free play mode. The player can unlock the "Use Old Save" extra, which imports all unlocked characters from Lego Star Wars for use in free play; however, a Lego Star Wars saved game must be present on the same memory card that contains Lego Star Wars II's save data.
Players can create two customized characters in the Mos Eisley cantina. These characters can be built using both miscellaneous parts and those of unlocked characters; 2,258,163,204 combinations are possible. Entering two cheat codes, publicized by IGN, makes pieces for a Santa Claus character available. The game generates names for the characters based on the pieces used (for example, a character made from pieces of Darth Vader and C-3PO might have the name "Darth-3PO"); alternately, the player may create a name.
## Development
Lego Star Wars II was created by the Cheshire game developer Traveller's Tales. LucasArts – busy with other projects – had deferred publishing of Lego Star Wars to Eidos Interactive, but regained the "necessary resources" to publish its sequel alongside TT Games Publishing. Lego Star Wars II was created for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Xbox, GameCube, PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance (GBA), Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable (PSP), and Xbox 360. Differences exist between platforms: the DS and GBA versions have some different playable characters than the other versions, and the DS and PSP versions support a "Wireless Lobby" for multiplayer gameplay.
Lego Star Wars II uses a modified Lego Star Wars engine. However, many gameplay improvements were made over its predecessor, most notably camera angles and movement. Camera movement in co-op was a specific point of concern, as LucasArts received critical feedback from fans over this issue. Traveller's Tales looked to expand upon the concept of levels completed entirely in vehicles. These "vehicle levels" were explored more thoroughly in Lego Star Wars II than in its predecessor. In response to complaints from fans, LucasArts and Traveller's Tales granted the ability to build bricks to all non-droid characters. Character customization, an entirely new concept, was considered a significant improvement over the original game, and is one of three features highlighted on the game's final back cover. Tom Stone, director at Traveller's Tales, stated of the various improvements made over the original game:
> We were surprised and, of course, delighted that the original game was played and enjoyed by so many people ... And with all of the new improvements and features along with the Original Trilogy we're implementing into Lego Star Wars II, we're confident that the new game has what it takes to entertain even more gamers than before.
The designers attempted to recreate the films' characters and events in a "cute" way. Assistant producer Jeff Gullet said that, in the game's recreation of a Return of the Jedi scene where Luke Skywalker "jumps off the plank ... and somersaults onto the skiff", Skywalker "performs an all-out acrobatic routine with all sorts of jumps from the plank. It's hilarious". LucasArts producer David Perkinson said, "unless you've got the heart of the Emperor, you are going to chuckle at many of [the characters] the first time you see them – you just have to. They're so darn cute!"
## Marketing and release history
On 2 February 2006, images of the game were leaked to the Internet. However, they were quickly removed, and LucasArts, if telephoned, did not confirm or deny the game's development. The game was formally announced on 10 February, at American International Toy Fair 2006. A preview was later hosted at Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2006. Because the original Lego Star Wars had been well received commercially and critically, selling 3.3 million copies by March 2006 and winning several awards, its sequel was highly anticipated both by fans of the original game and by video game publications such as IGN and GameSpot. Shortly before the game's release, promotions were set up at chain stores across the United States, including Toys "R" Us, Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, GameStop, and Circuit City.
In Europe, Lego Star Wars II was released on 11 September 2006, for PC, Xbox, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, DS, and Xbox 360; on 15 September for PlayStation 2; and on 10 November for PSP. The game's North American release fell on 12 September for all platforms, coinciding with the release of the individual two-disc DVD releases of the films on which it was based. The game's Australian release fell on 15 September for all platforms, but the Xbox 360 version was not released in this region. The OS X version of the game was released on 4 May 2007. The PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS versions were the only versions that saw release in Japan, which occurred on 2 November 2006. The game received a rating of E10+ from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (for "cartoon violence" and "crude humor"), 3+ from PEGI, and A from CERO.
A mobile phone adaptation of the game was developed by Universomo and published by THQ. It was released on 5 January 2007. Several gameplay features – such as two-dimensional graphics, limited character selection, and coverage only of the film Star Wars – distinguish this version of the game from the versions for other platforms. Lego Star Wars and Lego Star Wars II were later compiled in Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, developed by Traveller's Tales and published by LucasArts. The Complete Saga incorporated improvements from the sequel into the original game, and expanded the Mos Eisley cantina to allow access to both games' levels. It was created for Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, and DS. It was released on 6 November 2007.
## Reception
Upon release, Lego Star Wars II was positively received by critics, who praised its portrayal of the films' characters and events. Nintendo Power staff writer Chris Shepperd claimed that "[t]he adorable Lego adaptations also led to some hilarious story moments: the 'I am your father' scene from The Empire Strikes Back is priceless". Reviewers from GameSpy, 1Up.com, GameSpot, IGN, and PlayStation: The Official Magazine offered similar opinions. Shepperd and Variety's Ben Fritz called the game "adorable". In reviews of the Xbox 360 version, Official Xbox Magazine praised the game's "off-kilter humor", and Electronic Gaming Monthly stated that "[y]ou have to give credit to the brilliant blockhead who forced this awesome yet fundamentally bizarro idea on LucasArts." Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of global marketing for Microsoft, commended Lego Star Wars II for expanding the range of consumers for the Xbox 360, noting its family-friendly appeal.
The game was praised as a result of reviewers' preference of the original trilogy over the prequel trilogy. Andrew Reiner of Game Informer said that "comparing [the prequel trilogy] to the films in the original trilogy is similar to comparing Jar Jar Binks to Han Solo". Shepperd praised the level design of Lego Star Wars II, and called its predecessor's environments "sterile". These views were echoed by reviewers from 1Up.com, Variety, GameSpot, GameSpy, Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine (for the PlayStation 2), and BusinessWeek.
Critics were divided on the game's level of difficulty. Fritz claimed that, though Lego Star Wars II provided only a "short journey", it was "loads of fun". GameSpot's Ryan Davis estimated that it could be completed in six hours, but praised its bonus content. GameSpy and 1Up.com's reviewers thought similarly. A review by USA Today's Brett Molina claimed that "[t]he game's difficulty is balanced well enough so kids won't feel too frustrated while older gamers will still find a solid challenge" and gave the game an overall score of 8 out of 10. Official Xbox Magazine's review praised its "weird puzzles". IGN's Jeremy Dunham and Reiner were more critical of the perceived low difficulty.
Critics disliked the game's Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS versions. Davis believed that the Game Boy Advance version could be completed in two hours. GameSpy staff writer Phil Theobald bemoaned this version's poor controls, easy levels, and vehicle-piloting sections. He concluded that "for goodness sake, [one should] buy one of the [home] console versions". Theobald, Davis, and IGN's Craig Harris criticized the high number of glitches in the DS version.
### Accolades and sales
Lego Star Wars II won and was nominated for numerous awards, and ranked on several video game lists. The official Star Wars website declared Lego Star Wars II to be the best Star Wars-related product of 2006. The game won iParenting Media Awards' "2006 Greatest Products Call", and was placed on Reader's Digest's September 2006 "5 Things We Don't Want You to Miss" list, Time magazine's list of the top ten video games of 2006, and GameSpy's PC "Game of the Year" list. It received the 2006 Game of the Year award from Nick Jr. and IGN (for PC games only). It won Spike TV Video Game Awards 2006's "Best Game Based on a Movie or TV Show", and "Best Gameplay" from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts's 3rd British Academy Games Awards. It received BAFTA nominations in three other categories, including "Best Game". In contrast, the previously poorly received DS version was listed as one of the "tears" on IGN's September 2009 "Cheers & Tears" list of action games for the DS. The editors of Computer Games Magazine named Lego Star War II the fifth-best computer game of 2006, and called it "a superb action/adventure, one with [...] an almost puppy dog-like insistence that you love it."
Lego Star Wars II sold over 1.1 million copies worldwide in its opening week. The PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox 360, and Xbox versions were the third, fifth, eighth, and ninth-best selling games of September 2006, respectively. The GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 versions were the third, eighth, and ninth-best selling games of 2006, respectively. All platforms except PC combined, the game was the third-highest selling of 2006 in the United States, behind Madden NFL 07 and Cars. All platforms combined, the game was the fifth-highest selling of 2006 in the United Kingdom. The GameCube, GBA, and DS versions were the first, second, and fifth best-selling of January 2007 for their respective platforms. By 2 May 2009, the game's worldwide sales had surpassed 8.2 million. It has been certified as part of the budget lines Platinum Hits for the Xbox 360, Greatest Hits for the PlayStation 2 (each represents a worldwide sales total of at least 400,000 on its respective platform), and Player's Choice for the GameCube (250,000).
|
7,227 |
Comet Hale–Bopp
| 1,172,494,088 |
Long-period comet
|
[
"1997 in science",
"Astronomical objects discovered in 1995",
"Discoveries by amateur astronomers",
"Great comets",
"Heaven's Gate (religious group)",
"Non-periodic comets"
] |
Comet Hale–Bopp (formally designated C/1995 O1) is a comet that was one of the most widely observed of the 20th century and one of the brightest seen for many decades.
Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp discovered Comet Hale–Bopp separately on July 23, 1995, before it became visible to the naked eye. It is difficult to predict the maximum brightness of new comets with any degree of certainty, but Hale–Bopp exceeded most predictions when it passed perihelion on April 1, 1997, reaching about magnitude −1.8. It was visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months, due to its massive nucleus size. This is twice as long as the Great Comet of 1811, the previous record holder. Accordingly, Hale–Bopp was dubbed the great comet of 1997.
## Discovery
The comet was discovered independently on July 23, 1995, by two observers, Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp, both in the United States.
Hale had spent many hundreds of hours searching for comets without success, and was tracking known comets from his driveway in New Mexico when he chanced upon Hale–Bopp just after midnight. The comet had an apparent magnitude of 10.5 and lay near the globular cluster M70 in the constellation of Sagittarius. Hale first established that there was no other deep-sky object near M70, and then consulted a directory of known comets, finding that none were known to be in this area of the sky. Once he had established that the object was moving relative to the background stars, he emailed the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, the clearing house for astronomical discoveries.
Bopp did not own a telescope. He was out with friends near Stanfield, Arizona, observing star clusters and galaxies when he chanced across the comet while at the eyepiece of his friend's telescope. He realized he might have spotted something new when, like Hale, he checked his star maps to determine if any other deep-sky objects were known to be near M70, and found that there were none. He alerted the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams through a Western Union telegram. Brian G. Marsden, who had run the bureau since 1968, laughed, "Nobody sends telegrams anymore. I mean, by the time that telegram got here, Alan Hale had already e-mailed us three times with updated coordinates."
The following morning, it was confirmed that this was a new comet, and it was given the designation C/1995 O1. The discovery was announced in International Astronomical Union circular 6187.
## Early observation
Hale–Bopp's orbital position was calculated as 7.2 astronomical units (au) from the Sun, placing it between Jupiter and Saturn and by far the greatest distance from Earth at which a comet had been discovered by amateurs. Most comets at this distance are extremely faint, and show no discernible activity, but Hale–Bopp already had an observable coma. A precovery image taken at the Anglo-Australian Telescope in 1993 was found to show the then-unnoticed comet some 13 au from the Sun, a distance at which most comets are essentially unobservable. (Halley's Comet was more than 100 times fainter at the same distance from the Sun.) Analysis indicated later that its comet nucleus was 60±20 kilometres in diameter, approximately six times the size of Halley's Comet.
Its great distance and surprising activity indicated that comet Hale–Bopp might become very bright when it reached perihelion in 1997. However, comet scientists were wary – comets can be extremely unpredictable, and many have large outbursts at great distance only to diminish in brightness later. Comet Kohoutek in 1973 had been touted as a 'comet of the century' and turned out to be unspectacular.
## Perihelion
Hale–Bopp became visible to the naked eye in May 1996, and although its rate of brightening slowed considerably during the latter half of that year, scientists were still cautiously optimistic that it would become very bright. It was too closely aligned with the Sun to be observable during December 1996, but when it reappeared in January 1997 it was already bright enough to be seen by anyone who looked for it, even from large cities with light-polluted skies.
The Internet was a growing phenomenon at the time, and numerous websites that tracked the comet's progress and provided daily images from around the world became extremely popular. The Internet played a large role in encouraging the unprecedented public interest in comet Hale–Bopp.
As the comet approached the Sun, it continued to brighten, shining at 2nd magnitude in February, and showing a growing pair of tails, the blue gas tail pointing straight away from the Sun and the yellowish dust tail curving away along its orbit. On March 9, a solar eclipse in China, Mongolia and eastern Siberia allowed observers there to see the comet in the daytime. Hale–Bopp had its closest approach to Earth on March 22, 1997, at a distance of 1.315 au.
As it passed perihelion on April 1, 1997, the comet developed into a spectacular sight. It shone brighter than any star in the sky except Sirius, and its dust tail stretched 40–45 degrees across the sky. The comet was visible well before the sky got fully dark each night, and while many great comets are very close to the Sun as they pass perihelion, comet Hale–Bopp was visible all night to northern hemisphere observers.
## After perihelion
After its perihelion passage, the comet moved into the southern celestial hemisphere. The comet was much less impressive to southern hemisphere observers than it had been in the northern hemisphere, but southerners were able to see the comet gradually fade from view during the second half of 1997. The last naked-eye observations were reported in December 1997, which meant that the comet had remained visible without aid for 569 days, or about 18 and a half months. The previous record had been set by the Great Comet of 1811, which was visible to the naked eye for about 9 months.
The comet continued to fade as it receded, but was still tracked by astronomers. In October 2007, 10 years after the perihelion and at distance of 25.7 au from Sun, the comet was still active as indicated by the detection of the CO-driven coma. Herschel Space Observatory images taken in 2010 suggest comet Hale–Bopp is covered in a fresh frost layer. Hale–Bopp was again detected in December 2010 when it was 30.7 au away from the Sun, and in 2012, at 33.2 au from the Sun. The James Webb Space Telescope observed Hale–Bopp in 2022, when it was 46.2 au from the Sun.
## Orbital changes
The comet likely made its previous perihelion 4,200 years ago, in July 2215 BC. The estimated closest approach to Earth was 1.4 au, and it may have been observed in ancient Egypt during the 6th dynasty reign of the Pharaoh Pepi II (Reign: 2247 – c. 2216 BC). Pepi's pyramid at Saqqara contains a text referring to an "nhh-star" as a companion of the pharaoh in the heavens, where "nhh" is the hieroglyph for long hair.
Hale–Bopp may have had a near collision with Jupiter in early June 2215 BC, which probably caused a dramatic change in its orbit, and 2215 BC may have been its first passage through the inner Solar System from the Oort cloud. The comet's current orbit is almost perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic, so further close approaches to planets will be rare. However, in April 1996 the comet passed within 0.77 au of Jupiter, close enough for its orbit to be measurably affected by the planet's gravity. The comet's orbit was shortened considerably to a period of roughly 2,399 years, and it will next return to the inner Solar System around the year 4385. Its greatest distance from the Sun (aphelion) will be about 354 au, reduced from about 525 au.
The estimated probability of Hale-Bopp's striking Earth in future passages through the inner Solar System is remote, about 2.5×10<sup>−9</sup> per orbit. However, given that the comet nucleus is around 60 km in diameter, the consequences of such an impact would be apocalyptic. Weissman conservatively estimates the diameter at 35 km; an estimated density of 0.6 g/cm<sup>3</sup> then gives a cometary mass of 1.3×10<sup>19</sup> g. At a probable impact velocity of 52.5 km/s, impact energy can be calculated as 1.9×10<sup>32</sup> ergs, or 4.4×10<sup>9</sup> megatons, about 44 times the estimated energy of the K-T impact event.
Over many orbits, the cumulative effect of gravitational perturbations on comets with high orbital inclinations and small perihelion distances is generally to reduce the perihelion distance to very small values. Hale–Bopp has about a 15% chance of eventually becoming a sungrazing comet through this process. If such is the case, it could undergo huge mass loss, or break up into smaller pieces like the Kreutz sungrazers. It would also be extremely bright, due to a combination of closeness to the Sun and nuclei size, potentially exceeding Halley’s Comet in 837 AD.
## Scientific results
Due to the massive size of its nucleus, Comet Hale–Bopp was observed intensively by astronomers during its perihelion passage, and several important advances in cometary science resulted from these observations. The dust production rate of the comet was very high (up to 2.0×10<sup>6</sup> kg/s), which may have made the inner coma optically thick. Based on the properties of the dust grains—high temperature, high albedo and strong 10 μm silicate emission feature—the astronomers concluded the dust grains are smaller than observed in any other comet.
Hale–Bopp showed the highest ever linear polarization detected for any comet. Such polarization is the result of solar radiation getting scattered by the dust particles in the coma of the comet and depends on the nature of the grains. It further confirms that the dust grains in the coma of comet Hale–Bopp were smaller than inferred in any other comet.
### Sodium tail
One of the most remarkable discoveries was that the comet had a third type of tail. In addition to the well-known gas and dust tails, Hale–Bopp also exhibited a faint sodium tail, only visible with powerful instruments with dedicated filters. Sodium emission had been previously observed in other comets, but had not been shown to come from a tail. Hale–Bopp's sodium tail consisted of neutral atoms (not ions), and extended to some 50 million kilometres in length.
The source of the sodium appeared to be the inner coma, although not necessarily the nucleus. There are several possible mechanisms for generating a source of sodium atoms, including collisions between dust grains surrounding the nucleus, and "sputtering" of sodium from dust grains by ultraviolet light. It is not yet established which mechanism is primarily responsible for creating Hale–Bopp's sodium tail, and the narrow and diffuse components of the tail may have different origins.
While the comet's dust tail roughly followed the path of the comet's orbit and the gas tail pointed almost directly away from the Sun, the sodium tail appeared to lie between the two. This implies that the sodium atoms are driven away from the comet's head by radiation pressure.
### Deuterium abundance
The abundance of deuterium in comet Hale–Bopp in the form of heavy water was found to be about twice that of Earth's oceans. If Hale–Bopp's deuterium abundance is typical of all comets, this implies that although cometary impacts are thought to be the source of a significant amount of the water on Earth, they cannot be the only source.
Deuterium was also detected in many other hydrogen compounds in the comet. The ratio of deuterium to normal hydrogen was found to vary from compound to compound, which astronomers believe suggests that cometary ices were formed in interstellar clouds, rather than in the solar nebula. Theoretical modelling of ice formation in interstellar clouds suggests that comet Hale–Bopp formed at temperatures of around 25–45 kelvins.
### Organics
Spectroscopic observations of Hale–Bopp revealed the presence of many organic chemicals, several of which had never been detected in comets before. These complex molecules may exist within the cometary nucleus, or might be synthesised by reactions in the comet.
### Detection of argon
Hale–Bopp was the first comet where the noble gas argon was detected. Noble gases are chemically inert and vary from low to high volatility. Since different noble elements have different sublimation temperatures, and don't interact with other elements, they can be used for probing the temperature histories of the cometary ices. Krypton has a sublimation temperature of 16–20 K and was found to be depleted more than 25 times relative to the solar abundance, while argon with its higher sublimation temperature was enriched relative to the solar abundance. Together these observations indicate that the interior of Hale–Bopp has always been colder than 35–40 K, but has at some point been warmer than 20 K. Unless the solar nebula was much colder and richer in argon than generally believed, this suggests that the comet formed beyond Neptune in the Kuiper belt region and then migrated outward to the Oort cloud.
### Rotation
Comet Hale–Bopp's activity and outgassing were not spread uniformly over its nucleus, but instead came from several specific jets. Observations of the material streaming away from these jets allowed astronomers to measure the rotation period of the comet, which was found to be about 11 hours 46 minutes.
### Binary nucleus question
In 1997 a paper was published that hypothesised the existence of a binary nucleus to fully explain the observed pattern of comet Hale–Bopp's dust emission observed in October 1995. The paper was based on theoretical analysis, and did not claim an observational detection of the proposed satellite nucleus, but estimated that it would have a diameter of about 30 km, with the main nucleus being about 70 km across, and would orbit in about three days at a distance of about 180 km. This analysis was confirmed by observations in 1996 using Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2 of the Hubble Space Telescope which had taken images of the comet that revealed the satellite.
Although observations using adaptive optics in late 1997 and early 1998 showed a double peak in the brightness of the nucleus, controversy still exists over whether such observations can only be explained by a binary nucleus. The discovery of the satellite was not confirmed by other observations. Also, while comets have been observed to break up before, no case had been found of a stable binary nucleus until the subsequent discovery of .
## UFO claims
In November 1996, amateur astronomer Chuck Shramek of Houston, Texas took a CCD image of the comet which showed a fuzzy, slightly elongated object nearby. His computer sky-viewing program did not identify the star, so Shramek called the Art Bell radio program Coast to Coast AM to announce that he had discovered a "Saturn-like object" following Hale–Bopp. UFO enthusiasts, such as remote viewing proponent and Emory University political science professor Courtney Brown, soon concluded that there was an alien spacecraft following the comet.
Several astronomers, including Alan Hale, stated that the object was simply the 8.5-magnitude star SAO141894. They noted that the star did not appear on Shramek's computer program because the user preferences were set incorrectly. Art Bell claimed to have obtained an image of the object from an anonymous astrophysicist who was about to confirm its discovery. However, astronomers Olivier Hainaut and David Tholen of the University of Hawaii stated that the alleged photo was an altered copy of one of their own comet images.
Thirty-nine members of the Heaven's Gate cult committed mass suicide in March 1997 with the intention of teleporting to a spaceship which they believed was flying behind the comet.
Nancy Lieder, who claims to receive messages from aliens through an implant in her brain, stated that Hale–Bopp was a fiction designed to distract the population from the coming arrival of "Nibiru" or "Planet X", a giant planet whose close passage would disrupt the Earth's rotation, causing global cataclysm. Her original date for the apocalypse was May 2003, which passed without incident, but various conspiracy websites continued to predict the coming of Nibiru, most of whom tied it to the 2012 phenomenon. Lieder and others' claims of the planet Nibiru have been repeatedly debunked by scientists.
## Legacy
Its lengthy period of visibility and extensive coverage in the media meant that Hale–Bopp was probably the most-observed comet in history, making a far greater impact on the general public than the return of Halley's Comet in 1986, and certainly seen by a greater number of people than witnessed any of Halley's previous appearances. For instance, 69% of Americans had seen Hale–Bopp by April 9, 1997.
Hale–Bopp was a record-breaking comet—the farthest comet from the Sun discovered by amateurs, with the largest well-measured cometary nucleus known after 95P/Chiron, and it was visible to the naked eye for twice as long as the previous record-holder. It was also brighter than magnitude 0 for eight weeks, longer than any other recorded comet.
Carolyn Shoemaker and her husband Gene, both famous for co-discovering comet Shoemaker–Levy 9, were involved in a car crash after photographing the comet. Gene died in the crash and his ashes were sent to the Moon aboard NASA's Lunar Prospector mission along with an image of Hale–Bopp, "the last comet that the Shoemakers observed together".
## See also
- Comet Hyakutake
- Hale Bopp (Waterhouse), a 1997 string orchestra composition
- Lists of comets
|
17,781,156 |
Hillsgrove Covered Bridge
| 1,112,105,664 |
Bridge over Loyalsock Creek in Hillsgrove Township, Sullivan County, Pennsylvania
|
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"Road bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania",
"Tourist attractions in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania",
"Wooden bridges in Pennsylvania"
] |
The Hillsgrove Covered Bridge is a Burr arch truss covered bridge over Loyalsock Creek in Hillsgrove Township, Sullivan County, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It was built c. 1850 and is 186 feet (56.7 m) long. In 1973, it became the first covered bridge in the county to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The bridge is named for the township and nearby unincorporated village of Hillsgrove, and is also known as Rinkers Covered Bridge for an adjoining farm.
Pennsylvania had the first covered bridge in the United States, and has had the most such bridges since the 19th century. They were a transition between stone and metal bridges, with the roof and sides protecting the wooden structure from the weather. The Hillsgrove bridge has load-bearing Burr arches sandwiching multiple vertical king posts on each side, for strength and rigidity. It was built by Sadler Rodgers, who also constructed the nearby Forksville Covered Bridge in the same year, with a similar design.
The Hillsgrove bridge is the longest of three covered bridges remaining in Sullivan County, and served as a landing site for lumber rafts on the creek between 1870 and 1890. Nineteenth-century regulations restricting speed, number of animals, and fire are still posted on the bridge. Restoration work was carried out in 1963, 1968, 2010, and again in 2012 after serious flood damage. The bridge is still in use, with average daily traffic of 54 vehicles in 2012. Despite these restorations, it had a "structurally deficient" rating in the 2012 National Bridge Inventory, with a 16.5 percent structural sufficiency rating.
## Overview
The covered bridge is in Hillsgrove Township on Covered Bridge Road (Township Road 357), which is 0.1 miles (0.16 km) north of Pennsylvania Route 87 via Splash Dam Road (TR 359). The bridge crosses Loyalsock Creek 2.6 miles (4.2 km) northeast and upstream of the unincorporated village of Hillsgrove, and is just south of Elkland Township. Its official name on the NRHP is Hillsgrove Covered Bridge. It is also known as Rinkers Covered Bridge for the Rinker farm, which is located at the east end of the bridge. Sullivan County is located in north central Pennsylvania, about 123 miles (198 km) northwest of Philadelphia and 195 miles (314 km) east-northeast of Pittsburgh.
The village of Hillsgrove is where Daniel Ogden became the first settler in what is now Sullivan County, c. 1786. John Hill, who founded and named the village of Hill's Grove (later just Hillsgrove), came to the area in 1789 and bought Ogden's land about 1794. Sullivan County was formed from part of Lycoming County on March 14, 1847, and the bridge was built in 1850. The division of Lycoming County ran through Plunketts Creek Township, so there were initially townships of this name in each of the adjoining counties. To avoid confusion, the name of the Sullivan County township was changed to Hillsgrove Township in 1856; the new township name was taken from the village of Hillsgrove, which was (and is) its largest settlement. Hillsgrove Covered Bridge is named for its township and the nearby village, and gave its name to a nearby one-room school known as the Bridge View School.
The name Hillsgrove Covered Bridge can also refer to a now vanished covered bridge, also over Loyalsock Creek, but in the village of Hillsgrove. This stood from 1876 until 1934, when it was condemned and replaced by a steel and concrete structure. It was the third covered bridge on the site: the first fell into the creek, and the second was torn down to make way for the third bridge.
## History
### Background
The first covered bridge in the United States was built in 1800 over the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. According to Susan M. Zacher, author of The Covered Bridges of Pennsylvania: A Guide, the first covered bridges of the Burr arch truss design were also built in the state. Pennsylvania is estimated to have once had at least 1,500 covered bridges and is believed to have had the most in the country between 1830 and 1875. In 2001, Pennsylvania had more surviving historic covered bridges than any other state; 221 remained in 40 of its 67 counties.
Covered bridges were a transition between stone and metal bridges, the latter made of cast-iron or steel. In 19th-century Pennsylvania, lumber was an abundant resource for bridge construction, but did not last long when exposed to the elements. The roof and enclosed sides of covered bridges protected the structural elements, allowing some of these bridges to survive for well over a century. A Burr arch truss consists of a load-bearing arch sandwiching multiple king posts, resulting in a stronger and more rigid structure than one made of either element alone. Although there were 30 covered bridges in Sullivan County in 1890, only five were left by 1954, and as of 2015 only three remain: Forksville, Hillsgrove, and Sonestown.
### Construction and description
All three Sullivan County covered bridges were built c. 1850 with Burr arch trusses. The Hillsgrove bridge was built for Sullivan County by Sadler Rogers (or Rodgers), a native of Forksville who was only 18 years old at the time. He built the Forksville bridge the same year. The Forksville and Hillsgrove bridges both cross Loyalsock Creek, with the latter about 5 miles (8 km) further downstream. Although most sources do not list the builder of the Sonestown bridge, two newspaper articles on the remaining Sullivan County covered bridges reported that Rodgers had designed or possibly built it as well.
On July 2, 1973, the Hillsgrove bridge was the first covered bridge in Sullivan County to be added to the NRHP, and on July 24, 1980 it was again included on the NRHP in a Multiple Property Submission of seven Covered Bridges of Bradford, Sullivan and Lycoming Counties. The Hillsgrove bridge is on the 2013 National Bridge Inventory (NBI), which lists the covered bridge as 186 feet (56.7 m) long, with a maximum load of 5.0 short tons (4.5 t). However, the maximum load posted on the approaches to bridge itself is only 3.0 short tons (2.7 t). The 2006 NBI listed the bridge's roadway as 12 feet 2 inches (3.7 m) wide, while according to the NRHP, the bridge's "road surface width" is 18 feet (5.5 m), which is only sufficient for a single lane of traffic.
As of 2015, each portal has a sign with the posted clearance height of 8 feet (2.4 m). A sign posted on the east portal above the clearance preserves the following 19th-century limits on its use: "Notice: All persons are forbidden to ride drive or lead any animal over this bridge faster than a walk or to drive more than 15 head of cattle horses or mules thereon at one time or to carry fire thereon except in a safe vessel under a penalty of not less than \$.30 for each offence." Prior to the 2010 restoration, the west portal had a "No Trucks Allowed" sign hanging below the clearance sign.
The covered bridge rests on abutments of stone and mortar, which have been reinforced with concrete. There are no parapets. The bridge beams are reinforced in places with steel beams. The bridge deck is made of crosswise "narrow width laid flooring". Wheel guards on the deck separate the roadway from the pedestrian walkways on either side and protect the sides, which are covered with "vertical board and batten siding" almost to the eaves. The interior and exterior are painted red. The bridge has long, narrow windows with wooden shutters: the south side has three windows, and the north side has two. An opening between the eaves and the siding runs the length of the bridge on both sides. The gable roof is wooden shake shingles. The bridge is supported by a Burr arch truss, and is similar in design and construction to the one in Forksville. The western end of the Hillsgrove bridge lies against a steep hillside, and those approaching the bridge from the west must make a sharp right turn to enter it. Prior to the 2010 restoration, the sides were unpainted, but the portals were painted red, while the gable roof was sheet metal which had been installed over the original wooden shake shingles.
Attitudes towards covered bridges in Sullivan County changed considerably in the last half of the 20th century. Two of the five bridges that remained in 1954 were razed by 1970, when the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation considered tearing down the Forksville bridge (but renovated it because of its historic nature and appeal to tourists). The Hillsgrove Covered Bridge was added to the NRHP in 1973 and the two other bridges were added in 1980. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission now forbids the destruction of any covered bridge on the NRHP in the state and has to approve any renovation work.
### Use and restoration
In the 19th century the Hillsgrove Covered Bridge survived major floods on March 1, 1865, and June 1, 1889, that destroyed other bridges in the West Branch Susquehanna River valley. Between about 1870 and 1890, logging in the Loyalsock Creek watershed produced lumber rafts that floated beneath the bridge. The bridge was the site of "Uncle Ben's Landing" for lumber rafts, which did not travel at night. These rafts, each containing 5,000–30,000 board feet (11.8–70.8 m3) of lumber, were carried down the Loyalsock to its mouth at Montoursville. The raft era ended when the eastern hemlock were all clearcut.
An April, 1963 article on covered bridges in Sullivan and Lycoming counties noted that the Hillsgrove Bridge's deck was "a bit swaybacked", and according to the NBI data, the bridge was "reconstructed" in 1963. T. Corbin Lewis, a retired electrical contractor from Hillsgrove Township, restored the bridge in 1968. The concrete reinforcement on the southwest abutment of the Hillsgrove bridge is dated 1968, but the other work done in this restoration is not documented. Lewis also restored the Forksville Covered Bridge in 1970, with what its NRHP nomination form describes as "all kinds of odd repairs". Lewis' restoration work at Forksville involved cutting windows into the sides of the bridge for the first time, with four windows on the south side and three on the north. While the Hillsgrove bridge does have more windows on the south side (three) than the north (two), it is not known when they were added. A 1936 photograph of the bridge shows no windows on the south side, and no concrete reinforcement of the eastern abutment.
Covered Bridge Road north of Loyalsock Creek is accessed only by the Hillsgrove Covered Bridge at the eastern end, and a bridge over Elk Creek at the western end. Sullivan County replaced the bridge over Elk Creek between March 21 and July 21, 1989. Without the Elk Creek bridge, access for five families, a business, and a Little League Baseball camp with 110 children was limited to the covered bridge. County officials noted that despite the covered bridge's posted weight limit of 2.0 short tons (1.8 t), it could still support 5.0 short tons (4.5 t), sufficient for small fire trucks and ambulances. In an emergency, larger emergency vehicles could ford the creek if needed. In any case, the limited access did not cause any problems for the four-month period while the Elk Creek bridge was replaced.
The Evans' book describes repairs to the bridge's northeast siding, done between 1991 and 2000. In 2001, the US Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration awarded \$360,000 for 80 percent of the restoration costs of the Hillsgrove bridge under the Historic Covered Bridge Preservation Program. It was one of two bridges in Pennsylvania and 43 nationwide selected for the program that year. In 2010, the bridge was rehabilitated for the first time since the 1960s. Sullivan County solicited bids in February, expecting the project to cost between \$200,000 and \$500,000. The metal roof was replaced with cedar shake shingles, repairs were made to the wooden structure, portals, and siding, the bridge and deck were cleaned, and the bridge was painted red. The rehabilitation cost \$150,516, and the bridge reopened in the autumn of 2010.
In 2011, the bridge was badly damaged by historic flooding from Hurricane Irene in late August and Tropical Storm Lee in early September. Loyalsock Creek's flood waters swept debris into the bridge, removing much of the siding on the south side, washing out the approaches, damaging the structural beams, and leaving "two trees lodged between the timber low chord and timber deck" on the north side. While the Forksville covered bridge escaped serious damage, Hillsgrove and Sonestown were both closed, and Preservation Pennsylvania issued a report that questioned whether either bridge could be restored.
Sullivan County applied for and received Federal Emergency Management Agency funding for repairs to both bridges. The Hillsgrove bridge was restored first, as it was the main route to a restaurant and heavily used by hunters. Repairs included replacement of broken structural beams, sections of the deck, and siding. Because Loyalsock Creek is an "Exceptional Value Stream", the scaffolding that supported the structure on the creek bed during the \$250,000-restoration had to be approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The bridge was reopened on November 21, 2012, just in time for deer hunting season, by one of the Sullivan County Commissioners; the county commissioner had been married on the bridge exactly 25 years before.
Despite the 2010 restoration, the 2012 Federal Highway Administration National Bridge Inventory found the bridge to be "Structurally Deficient". In addition, the sufficiency rating of the bridge structure was 16.5 percent, and the bridge railings and approach guardrails did not meet "currently acceptable standards".
As of 2015, the bridge is still used; its average daily traffic was 54 vehicles in 2012. The bridge's 2012 post-flood restoration received an award for Emergency Response. A 2014 book, America's Covered Bridges - Practical Crossings - Nostalgic Icons, included two photos of the Hillsgrove Covered Bridge (and the nearby Forksville Covered Bridge on the book's cover). According to Zacher, the "Sullivan County bridges, because of their settings, are some of the most attractive in the state".
## Bridge dimensions
The following table is a comparison of published measurements of length, width and load recorded in different sources using different methods, as well as the name or names cited. The NBI measures bridge length between the "backwalls of abutments" or pavement grooves and the roadway width as "the most restrictive minimum distance between curbs or rails". The NRHP form was prepared by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC), which surveyed county engineers, historical and covered bridge societies, and others for all the covered bridges in the commonwealth. The Evans visited every covered bridge in Pennsylvania in 2001 and measured each bridge's length (portal to portal) and width (at the portal) for their book. The data in Zacher's book was based on a 1991 survey of all covered bridges in Pennsylvania by the PHMC and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, aided by local government and private agencies. The article uses primarily the NBI and NRHP data, as they are national programs.
## See also
- List of covered bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania
|
16,578 |
John Hay
| 1,171,270,353 |
American statesman (1838–1905)
|
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John Milton Hay (October 8, 1838 – July 1, 1905) was an American statesman and official whose career in government stretched over almost half a century. Beginning as a private secretary and an assistant for Abraham Lincoln, he became a diplomat. He served as United States Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Hay was also a biographer of Lincoln, and wrote poetry and other literature throughout his life.
Born in Salem, Indiana to an anti-slavery family that moved to Warsaw, Illinois, Hay showed great potential from an early age, and his family sent him to Brown University. After graduation in 1858, Hay read law in his uncle's office in Springfield, Illinois, adjacent to that of Lincoln. Hay worked for Lincoln's successful presidential campaign and became one of his private secretaries in the White House. Throughout the American Civil War, Hay was close to Lincoln and stood by his deathbed after the President was shot. In addition to his other literary works, Hay co-authored, with John George Nicolay, a ten-volume biography of Lincoln that helped shape the assassinated president's historical image.
After Lincoln's death, Hay spent several years at diplomatic posts in Europe, then worked for the New-York Tribune under Horace Greeley and Whitelaw Reid. Hay remained active in politics, and from 1879 to 1881 served as Assistant Secretary of State. Afterward, he returned to the private sector, remaining there until President McKinley, of whom he had been a major backer, made him the Ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1897. Hay became the Secretary of State the following year.
Hay served for nearly seven years as Secretary of State under President McKinley and, after McKinley's assassination, under Theodore Roosevelt. Hay was responsible for negotiating the Open Door Policy, which kept China open to trade with all countries on an equal basis, with international powers. By negotiating the Hay–Pauncefote Treaty with the United Kingdom, the (ultimately unratified) Hay–Herrán Treaty with Colombia, and finally the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty with the newly independent Republic of Panama, Hay also cleared the way for the building of the Panama Canal.
## Early life
### Family and youth
John Milton Hay was born in Salem, Indiana, on October 8, 1838. He was the third son of Dr. Charles Hay and the former Helen Leonard. Charles Hay, born in Lexington, Kentucky, hated slavery and moved to the North in the early 1830s. A doctor, he practiced in Salem. Helen's father, David Leonard, had moved his family west from Assonet, Massachusetts, in 1818, but died en route to Vincennes, Indiana, and Helen relocated to Salem in 1830 to teach school. They married there in 1831. Charles was not successful in Salem, and moved, with his wife and children, to Warsaw, Illinois, in 1841.
John attended the local schools, and in 1849 his uncle Milton Hay invited John to live at his home in Pittsfield, Pike County, and attend a well-regarded local school, the John D. Thomson Academy. Milton was a friend of Springfield attorney Abraham Lincoln and had read law in the firm Stuart and Lincoln. In Pittsfield, John first met John Nicolay, who was at the time a 20-year-old newspaperman. Once John Hay completed his studies there, the 13-year-old was sent to live with his grandfather in Springfield and attend school there. His parents and uncle Milton (who financed the boy's education) sent him to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, alma mater of his late maternal grandfather.
### Student and Lincoln supporter
Hay enrolled at Brown in 1855. Although he enjoyed college life, he did not find it easy: his Western clothing and accent made him stand out; he was not well prepared academically and was often sick. Hay gained a reputation as a star student and became a part of Providence's literary circle that included Sarah Helen Whitman and Nora Perry. He wrote poetry and experimented with hashish. Hay received his Master of Arts degree in 1858, and was, like his grandfather before him, Class Poet. He returned to Illinois. Milton Hay had moved his practice to Springfield, and John became a clerk in his firm, where he could study law.
Milton Hay's firm was one of the most prestigious in Illinois. Lincoln maintained offices next door and was a rising star in the new Republican Party. Hay recalled an early encounter with Lincoln:
> He came into the law office where I was reading ... with a copy of Harper's Magazine in hand, containing Senator Douglas's famous article on Popular Sovereignty. [whether residents of each territory could decide on slavery] Lincoln seemed greatly roused by what he had read. Entering the office without a salutation, he said: "This will never do. He puts the moral element out of this question. It won't stay out."
Hay was not a supporter of Lincoln for president until after his nomination in 1860. Hay then made speeches and wrote newspaper articles boosting Lincoln's candidacy. When Nicolay, who had been made Lincoln's private secretary for the campaign, found he needed help with the huge amounts of correspondence, Hay worked full-time for Lincoln for six months.
After Lincoln was elected, Nicolay, who continued as Lincoln's private secretary, recommended that Hay be hired to assist him at the White House. Lincoln is reported to have said, "We can't take all Illinois with us down to Washington" but then "Well, let Hay come". Kushner and Sherrill were dubious about "the story of Lincoln's offhand appointment of Hay" as fitting well into Hay's self-image of never having been an office-seeker, but "poorly into the realities of Springfield politics of the 1860s"—Hay must have expected some reward for handling Lincoln's correspondence for months. Hay biographer John Taliaferro suggests that Lincoln engaged Nicolay and Hay to assist him, rather than more seasoned men, both "out of loyalty and surely because of the competence and compatibility that his two young aides had demonstrated". Historian Joshua Zeitz argues that Lincoln was moved to hire Hay when Milton agreed to pay his nephew's salary for six months.
## American Civil War
### Secretary to Lincoln
Milton Hay desired that his nephew go to Washington as a qualified attorney, and John Hay was admitted to the bar in Illinois on February 4, 1861. On February 11, he embarked with President-elect Lincoln on a circuitous journey to Washington. By this time, several Southern states had seceded to form the Confederate States of America in reaction to the election of Lincoln, seen as an opponent of slavery. When Lincoln was sworn in on March 4, Hay and Nicolay moved into the White House, sharing a shabby bedroom. As there was only authority for payment of one presidential secretary (Nicolay), Hay was appointed to a post in the Interior Department at \$1,600 per year, seconded to service at the White House. They were available to Lincoln 24 hours a day. As Lincoln took no vacations as president and worked seven days a week, often until 11 pm (or later, during crucial battles) the burden on his secretaries was heavy.
Hay and Nicolay divided their responsibilities, Nicolay tending to assist Lincoln in his office and in meetings, while Hay dealt with the correspondence, which was voluminous. Both men tried to shield Lincoln from office-seekers and others who wanted to meet with the President. Unlike the dour Nicolay, Hay, with his charm, escaped much of the hard feelings from those denied Lincoln's presence. Abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson described Hay as "a nice young fellow, who unfortunately looks about seventeen and is oppressed with the necessity of behaving like seventy." Hay continued to write, anonymously, for newspapers, sending in columns calculated to make Lincoln appear a sorrowful man, religious and competent, giving of his life and health to preserve the Union. Similarly, Hay served as what Taliaferro deemed a "White House propagandist," in his columns explaining away losses such as that at First Bull Run in July 1861.
Despite the heavy workload—Hay wrote that he was busy 20 hours a day—he tried to make as normal a life as possible, eating his meals with Nicolay at Willard's Hotel, going to the theater with Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, and reading Les Misérables in French. Hay, still in his early 20s, spent time both in barrooms and at cultured get-togethers in the homes of Washington's elite. The two secretaries often clashed with Mary Lincoln, who resorted to various stratagems to get the dilapidated White House restored without depleting Lincoln's salary, which had to cover entertainment and other expenses. Despite the secretaries' objections, Mrs. Lincoln was generally the victor and managed to save almost 70% of her husband's salary in his four years in office.
After the death of Lincoln's 11-year-old son Willie in February 1862 (an event not mentioned in Hay's diary or correspondence), "it was Hay who became, if not a surrogate son, then a young man who stirred a higher form of parental nurturing that Lincoln, despite his best intentions, did not successfully bestow on either of his surviving children". According to Hay biographer Robert Gale, "Hay came to adore Lincoln for his goodness, patience, understanding, sense of humor, humility, magnanimity, sense of justice, healthy skepticism, resilience and power, love of the common man, and mystical patriotism". Speaker of the House Galusha Grow stated, "Lincoln was very much attached to him"; writer Charles G. Halpine, who knew Hay then, later recorded that "Lincoln loved him as a son".
Hay and Nicolay accompanied Lincoln to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for the dedication of the cemetery there, where were interred many of those who fell at the Battle of Gettysburg. Although they made much of Lincoln's brief Gettysburg Address in their 1890 multi-volume biography of Lincoln, Hay's diary states "the President, in a firm, free way, with more grace than is his wont, said his half-dozen lines of consecration."
### Presidential emissary
Lincoln sent Hay away from the White House on various missions. In August 1861, Hay escorted Mary Lincoln and her children to Long Branch, New Jersey, a resort on the Jersey Shore, both as their caretaker and as a means of giving Hay a much-needed break. The following month, Lincoln sent him to Missouri to deliver a letter to Union General John C. Frémont, who had irritated the President with military blunders and by freeing local slaves without authorization, endangering Lincoln's attempts to keep the border states in the Union.
In April 1863, Lincoln sent Hay to the Union-occupied South Carolina coast to report back on the ironclad vessels being used in an attempt to recapture Charleston Harbor. Hay then went on to the Florida coast. He returned to Florida in January 1864, after Lincoln had announced his Ten Percent Plan, that if ten percent of the 1860 electorate in a state took oaths of loyalty and to support emancipation, they could form a government with federal protection. Lincoln considered Florida, with its small population, a good test case, and made Hay a major, sending him to see if he could get sufficient men to take the oath. Hay spent a month in the state during February and March 1864, but Union defeats there reduced the area under federal control. Believing his mission impractical, he sailed back to Washington.
In July 1864, New York publisher Horace Greeley sent word to Lincoln that there were Southern peace emissaries in Canada. Lincoln doubted that they actually spoke for Confederate President Jefferson Davis, but had Hay journey to New York to persuade the publisher to go to Niagara Falls, Ontario, to meet with them and bring them to Washington. Greeley reported to Lincoln that the emissaries lacked accreditation by Davis, but were confident they could bring both sides together. Lincoln sent Hay to Ontario with what became known as the Niagara Manifesto: that if the South laid down its arms, freed the slaves, and reentered the Union, it could expect liberal terms on other points. The Southerners refused to come to Washington to negotiate.
### Assassination of Lincoln
By the end of 1864, with Lincoln reelected and the victorious war winding down, both Hay and Nicolay let it be known that they desired different jobs. Soon after Lincoln's second inauguration in March 1865, the two secretaries were appointed to the US delegation in Paris, Nicolay as consul and Hay as secretary of legation. Hay wrote to his brother Charles that the appointment was "entirely unsolicited and unexpected", a statement that Kushner and Sherrill found unconvincing given that Hay had spent hundreds of hours during the war with Secretary of State William H. Seward, who had often discussed personal and political matters with him, and the close relationship between the two men was so well known that office-seekers cultivated Hay as a means of getting to Seward. The two men were also motivated to find new jobs by their deteriorating relationship with Mary Lincoln, who sought their ouster, and by Nicolay's desire to wed his intended—he could not bring a bride to his shared room at the White House. They remained at the White House pending the arrival and training of replacements.
Hay did not accompany the Lincolns to Ford's Theatre on the night of April 14, 1865, but remained at the White House, drinking whiskey with Robert Lincoln. When the two were informed that the President had been shot, they hastened to the Petersen House, a boarding house where the stricken Lincoln had been taken. Hay remained by Lincoln's deathbed through the night and was present when he died. At the moment of Lincoln's death, Hay observed "a look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features". He heard War Secretary Edwin Stanton's declaration, "Now he belongs to the ages."
According to Kushner and Sherrill, "Lincoln's death was for Hay a personal loss, like the loss of a father ... Lincoln's assassination erased any remaining doubts Hay had about Lincoln's greatness." In 1866, in a personal letter, Hay deemed Lincoln, "the greatest character since Christ". Taliaferro noted that "Hay would spend the rest of his life mourning Lincoln ... wherever Hay went and whatever he did, Lincoln would always be watching".
## Early diplomatic career
Hay sailed for Paris at the end of June 1865. There, he served under U.S. Minister to France John Bigelow. The workload was not heavy, and Hay found time to enjoy the pleasures of Paris. When Bigelow resigned in mid-1866, Hay, as was customary, submitted his resignation, though he was asked to remain until Bigelow's successor was in place, and stayed until January 1867. He consulted with Secretary of State Seward, asking him for "anything worth having". Seward suggested the post of Minister to Sweden, but reckoned without the new president, Andrew Johnson, who had his own candidate. Seward offered Hay a job as his private secretary, but Hay declined, and returned home to Warsaw, Illinois.
Initially happy to be home, Hay quickly grew restive, and he was glad to hear, in early June 1867, that he had been appointed secretary of legation to act as chargé d'affaires at Vienna. He sailed for Europe the same month, and while in England visited the House of Commons, where he was greatly impressed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Benjamin Disraeli. The Vienna post was only temporary, until Johnson could appoint a chargé d'affaires and have him confirmed by the Senate, and the workload was light, allowing Hay, who was fluent in German, to spend much of his time traveling. It was not until July 1868 that Henry Watts became Hay's replacement. Hay resigned, spent the remainder of the summer in Europe, then went home to Warsaw.
Unemployed again, in December 1868 Hay journeyed to the capital, writing to Nicolay that he "came to Washington in the peaceful pursuit of a fat office. But there is nothing just now available". Seward promised to "wrestle with Andy for anything that turns up", but nothing did prior to the departure of both Seward and Johnson from office on March 4, 1869. In May, Hay went back to Washington from Warsaw to press his case with the new Grant administration. The next month, due to the influence of his friends, he obtained the post of secretary of legation in Spain.
Although the salary was low, Hay was interested in serving in Madrid both because of the political situation there—Queen Isabella II had recently been deposed—and because the U.S. Minister was the swashbuckling former congressman, General Daniel Sickles. Hay hoped to assist Sickles in gaining U.S. control over Cuba, then a Spanish colony. Sickles was unsuccessful and Hay resigned in May 1870, citing the low salary, but remaining in his post until September. Two legacies of Hay's time in Madrid were magazine articles he wrote that became the basis of his first book, Castilian Days, and his lifelong friendship with Sickles's personal secretary, Alvey A. Adee, who would be a close aide to Hay at the State Department.
## Wilderness years (1870–1897)
### Tribune and marriage
While still in Spain, Hay had been offered the position of assistant editor at the New-York Tribune—both the editor, Horace Greeley, and his managing editor, Whitelaw Reid, were anxious to hire Hay. He joined the staff in October 1870. The Tribune was the leading reform newspaper in New York, and through mail subscriptions, the largest-circulating newspaper in the nation. Hay wrote editorials for the Tribune, and Greeley soon proclaimed him the most brilliant writer of "breviers" (as such editorials were called) that he had ever had.
With his success as an editorial writer, Hay's duties expanded. In October 1871, he journeyed to Chicago after the great fire there, interviewing Mrs. O'Leary, whose cow was said to have started the blaze, describing her as "a woman with a lamp [who went] to the barn behind the house, to milk the cow with the crumpled temper, that kicked the lamp, that spilled the kerosene, that fired the straw that burned Chicago". His work at the Tribune came as his fame as a poet was reaching its peak, and one colleague described it as "a liberal education in the delights of intellectual life to sit in intimate companionship with John Hay and watch the play of that well-stored and brilliant mind". In addition to writing, Hay was signed by the prestigious Boston Lyceum Bureau, whose clients included Mark Twain and Susan B. Anthony, to give lectures on the prospects for democracy in Europe, and on his years in the Lincoln White House.
By the time President Grant ran for reelection in 1872, Grant's administration had been rocked by scandal, and some disaffected members of his party formed the Liberal Republicans, naming Greeley as their candidate for president, a nomination soon joined in by the Democrats. Hay was unenthusiastic about the editor-turned-candidate, and in his editorials mostly took aim at Grant, who, despite the scandals, remained untarred, and who won a landslide victory in the election. Greeley died only weeks later, a broken man. Hay's stance endangered his hitherto sterling credentials in the Republican Party.
By 1873, Hay was wooing Clara Stone, daughter of Cleveland multimillionaire railroad and banking mogul Amasa Stone. Their marriage in 1874 made the salary attached to office a small consideration for the rest of his life. Amasa Stone needed someone to watch over his investments, and wanted Hay to move to Cleveland to fill the post. Although the Hays initially lived in John's New York apartment and later in a townhouse there, they moved in June 1875 to Stone's ornate home on Cleveland's Euclid Avenue, "Millionaire's Row", and a mansion was quickly under construction for the Hays next-door. The Hays had four children, Helen Hay Whitney, Adelbert Stone Hay, Alice Evelyn Hay Wadsworth Boyd (who married James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr.), and Clarence Leonard Hay. Their father proved successful as a money manager, though he devoted much of his time to literary and political activities, writing to Adee that "I do nothing but read and yawn".
On December 29, 1876, a bridge over Ohio's Ashtabula River collapsed. The bridge had been built from metal cast at one of Stone's mills, and was carrying a train owned and operated by Stone's Lake Shore and Michigan Railway. Ninety-two people died; it was the worst rail disaster in American history up to that point. Blame fell heavily on Stone, who departed for Europe to recuperate and left Hay in charge of his businesses. The summer of 1877 was marked by labor disputes; a strike over wage cuts on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad soon spread to the Lake Shore, much to Hay's outrage. He blamed foreign agitators for the dispute, and vented his anger over the strike in his only novel, The Bread-Winners (1883).
### Return to politics
Hay remained disaffected from the Republican Party in the mid-1870s. Seeking a candidate of either party he could support as a reformer, he watched as his favored Democrat, Samuel Tilden, gained his party's nomination, but his favored Republican, James G. Blaine, did not, falling to Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, whom Hay did not support during the campaign. Hayes's victory in the election left Hay an outsider as he sought a return to politics, and he was initially offered no place in the new administration. Nevertheless, Hay attempted to ingratiate himself with the new president by sending him a gold ring with a strand of George Washington's hair, a gesture that Hayes deeply appreciated. Hay spent time working with Nicolay on their Lincoln biography, and traveling in Europe. When Reid, who had succeeded Greeley as editor of the Tribune, was offered the post of Minister to Germany in December 1878, he turned it down and recommended Hay. Secretary of State William M. Evarts indicated that Hay "had not been active enough in political efforts", to Hay's regret, who told Reid that he "would like a second-class mission uncommonly well".
From May to October 1879, Hay set out to reconfirm his credentials as a loyal Republican, giving speeches in support of candidates and attacking the Democrats. In October, President and Mrs. Hayes came to a reception at Hay's Cleveland home. When Assistant Secretary of State Frederick W. Seward resigned later that month, Hay was offered his place and accepted, after some hesitancy because he was considering running for Congress.
In Washington, Hay oversaw a staff of eighty employees, renewed his acquaintance with his friend Henry Adams, and substituted for Evarts at Cabinet meetings when the Secretary was out of town. In 1880, he campaigned for the Republican nominee for president, his fellow Ohioan, Congressman James A. Garfield. Hay felt that Garfield did not have enough backbone, and hoped that Reid and others would "inoculate him with the gall which I fear he lacks". Garfield consulted Hay before and after his election as president on appointments and other matters, but offered Hay only the post of private secretary (though he promised to increase its pay and power), and Hay declined. Hay resigned as assistant secretary effective March 31, 1881, and spent the next seven months as acting editor of the Tribune during Reid's extended absence in Europe. Garfield's death in September and Reid's return the following month left Hay again on the outside of political power, looking in. He would spend the next fifteen years in that position.
### Wealthy traveler (1881–1897)
#### Author and dilettante
After 1881, Hay did not again hold public office until 1897. Amasa Stone committed suicide in 1883; his death left the Hays very wealthy. They spent several months in most years traveling in Europe. The Lincoln biography absorbed some of Hay's time, the hardest work being done with Nicolay in 1884 and 1885; beginning in 1886, portions began appearing serially, and the ten-volume biography was published in 1890.
In 1884, Hay and Adams commissioned architect Henry Hobson Richardson to construct houses for them on Washington's Lafayette Square; these were completed by 1886. Hay's house, facing the White House and fronting on Sixteenth Street, was described even before completion as "the finest house in Washington." The price for the combined tract, purchased from William Wilson Corcoran, was \$73,800, of which Adams paid a third for his lot. Hay budgeted the construction cost at \$50,000; his ornate, 12,000 square feet (1,100 m<sup>2</sup>) mansion eventually cost over twice that. Despite their possession of two lavish houses, the Hays spent less than half the year in Washington and only a few weeks a year in Cleveland. They also spent time at The Fells, their summer residence in Newbury, New Hampshire. According to Gale, "for a full decade before his appointment in 1897 as ambassador to England, Hay was lazy and uncertain."
Hay continued to devote much of his energy to Republican politics. In 1884, he supported Blaine for president, donating considerable sums to the senator's unsuccessful campaign against New York Governor Grover Cleveland. Many of Hay's friends were unenthusiastic about Blaine's candidacy, to Hay's anger, and he wrote to editor Richard Watson Gilder, "I have never been able to appreciate the logic that induces some excellent people every four years because they cannot nominate the candidate they prefer to vote for the party they don't prefer." In 1888, Hay had to follow his own advice as his favored candidate, Ohio Senator John Sherman, was unsuccessful at the Republican convention. After some reluctance, Hay supported the nominee, former Indiana senator Benjamin Harrison, who was elected. Though Harrison appointed men whom Hay supported, including Blaine, Reid, and Robert Lincoln, Hay was not asked to serve in the Harrison administration. In 1890, Hay spoke for Republican congressional candidates, addressing a rally of 10,000 people in New York City, but the party was defeated, losing control of Congress. Hay contributed funds to Harrison's unsuccessful re-election effort, in part because Reid had been made Harrison's 1892 running mate.
#### McKinley backer
Hay was an early supporter of Ohio's William McKinley and worked closely with McKinley's political manager, Cleveland industrialist Mark Hanna. In 1889, Hay supported McKinley in his unsuccessful effort to become Speaker of the House. Four years later, McKinley—by then Governor of Ohio—faced a crisis when a friend whose notes he had imprudently co-signed went bankrupt during the Panic of 1893. The debts were beyond the governor's means to pay, and the possibility of insolvency threatened McKinley's promising political career. Hay was among those Hanna called upon to contribute, buying up \$3,000 of the debt of over \$100,000. Although others paid more, "Hay's checks were two of the first, and his touch was more personal, a kindness McKinley never forgot". The governor wrote, "How can I ever repay you & other dear friends?"
The same panic that nearly ruined McKinley convinced Hay that men like himself must take office to save the country from disaster. By the end of 1894, he was deeply involved in efforts to lay the groundwork for the governor's 1896 presidential bid. It was Hay's job to persuade potential supporters that McKinley was worth backing. Nevertheless, Hay found time for a lengthy stay in New Hampshire—one visitor at The Fells in mid-1895 was Rudyard Kipling—and later in the year wrote, "The summer wanes and I have done nothing for McKinley." He atoned with a \$500 check to Hanna, the first of many. During the winter of 1895–96, Hay passed along what he heard from other Republicans influential in Washington, such as Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.
Hay spent part of the spring and early summer of 1896 in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in Europe. There was a border dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana, and Cleveland's Secretary of State, Richard Olney, supported the Venezuelan position, announcing the Olney interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. Hay told British politicians that McKinley, if elected, would be unlikely to change course. McKinley was nominated in June 1896; still, many Britons were minded to support whoever became the Democratic candidate. This changed when the 1896 Democratic National Convention nominated former Nebraska congressman William Jennings Bryan on a "free silver" platform; he had electrified the delegates with his Cross of Gold speech. Hay reported to McKinley when he returned to Britain after a brief stay on the Continent during which Bryan was nominated in Chicago: "they were all scared out of their wits for fear Bryan would be elected, and very polite in their references to you."
Once Hay returned to the United States in early August, he went to The Fells and watched from afar as Bryan barnstormed the nation in his campaign while McKinley gave speeches from his front porch. Despite an invitation from the candidate, Hay was reluctant to visit McKinley at his home in Canton. "He has asked me to come, but I thought I would not struggle with the millions on his trampled lawn". In October, after basing himself at his Cleveland home and giving a speech for McKinley, Hay went to Canton at last, writing to Adams,
> I had been dreading it for a month, thinking it would be like talking in a boiler factory. But he met me at the [railroad] station, gave me meat & took me upstairs and talked for two hours as calmly & serenely as if we were summer boarders in Bethlehem, at a loss for means to kill time. I was more struck than ever with his mask. It is a genuine Italian ecclesiastical face of the XVth Century.
Hay was disgusted by Bryan's speeches, writing in language that Taliaferro compares to The Bread-Winners that the Democrat "simply reiterates the unquestioned truths that every man with a clean shirt is a thief and ought to be hanged: that there is no goodness and wisdom except among the illiterate & criminal classes". Despite Bryan's strenuous efforts, McKinley won the election easily, with a campaign run by himself and Hanna, and well-financed by supporters like Hay. Henry Adams later wondered, "I would give sixpence to know how much Hay paid for McKinley. His politics must have cost."
## Ambassador
### Appointment
In the post-election speculation as to who would be given office under McKinley, Hay's name figured prominently, as did that of Whitelaw Reid; both men sought high office in the State Department, either as secretary or one of the major ambassadorial posts. Reid, in addition to his vice-presidential run, had been Minister to France under Harrison. An asthmatic, he handicapped himself by departing for Arizona Territory for the winter, leading to speculation about his health.
Hay was faster than Reid to realize that the race for these posts would be affected by Hanna's desire to be senator from Ohio, as with one of the state's places about to be occupied by the newly elected Joseph B. Foraker, the only possible seat for him was that held by Senator Sherman. As the septuagenarian senator had served as Treasury Secretary under Hayes, only the secretaryship of state was likely to attract him and cause a vacancy that Hanna could fill. Hay knew that with only eight cabinet positions, only one could go to an Ohioan, and so he had no chance for a cabinet post. Accordingly, Hay encouraged Reid to seek the State position, while firmly ruling himself out as a possible candidate for that post, and quietly seeking the inside track to be ambassador in London. Zeitz states that Hay "aggressively lobbied" for the position.
According to Taliaferro, "only after the deed was accomplished and Hay was installed as the ambassador to the Court of St. James's would it be possible to detect just how subtly and completely he had finessed his ally and friend, Whitelaw Reid". A telegraph from Hay to McKinley in the latter's papers, dated December 26 (most likely 1896) reveals the former's suggestion that McKinley tell Reid that the editor's friends had insisted that Reid not endanger his health through office, especially in London's smoggy climes. The following month, in a letter, Hay set forth his own case for the ambassadorship, and urged McKinley to act quickly, as suitable accommodations in London would be difficult to secure. Hay gained his object (as did Hanna), and shifted his focus to appeasing Reid. Taliaferro states that Reid never blamed Hay, but Kushner and Sherrill recorded, "Reid was certain that he had been wronged" by Hay, and the announcement of Hay's appointment nearly ended their 26-year friendship.
Reaction in Britain to Hay's appointment was generally positive, with George Smalley of The Times writing to him, "we want a man who is a true American yet not anti-English". Hay secured a Georgian house on Carlton House Terrace, overlooking Horse Guards Parade, with 11 servants. He brought with him Clara, their own silver, two carriages, and five horses. Hay's salary of \$17,000 "did not even begin to cover the cost of their extravagant lifestyle".
### Service
During his service as ambassador, Hay attempted to advance the relationship between the U.S. and Britain. The United Kingdom had long been seen negatively by many Americans, a legacy of its role during the American Revolution that was refreshed by its neutrality in the American Civil War, when it allowed merchant raiders such as the Alabama to be constructed in British ports, which then preyed on US-flagged ships. In spite of these past differences, according to Taliaferro, "rapprochement made more sense than at any time in their respective histories". In his Thanksgiving Day address to the American Society in London in 1897, Hay echoed these points, "The great body of people in the United States and England are friends ... [sharing] that intense respect and reverence for order, liberty, and law which is so profound a sentiment in both countries". Although Hay was not successful in resolving specific controversies in his year and a third as ambassador, both he and British policymakers regarded his tenure as a success, because of the advancement of good feelings and cooperation between the two nations.
An ongoing dispute between the U.S. and Britain was over the practice of pelagic sealing, that is, the capture of seals offshore of Alaska. The U.S. considered them American resources; the Canadians (Britain was still responsible for that dominion's foreign policy) contended that the mammals were being taken on the high seas, free to all. Soon after Hay's arrival, McKinley sent former Secretary of State John W. Foster to London to negotiate the issue. Foster quickly issued an accusatory note to the British that was printed in the newspapers. Although Hay was successful in getting Lord Salisbury, then both Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, to agree to a conference to decide the matter, the British withdrew when the U.S. also invited Russia and Japan, rendering the conference ineffective. Another issue on which no agreement was reached was that of bimetallism: McKinley had promised silver-leaning Republicans to seek an international agreement varying the price ratio between silver and gold to allow for free coinage of silver, and Hay was instructed to seek British participation. The British would only join if the Indian colonial government (on a silver standard until 1893) was willing; this did not occur, and coupled with an improving economic situation that decreased support for bimetallism in the United States, no agreement was reached.
Hay had little involvement in the crisis over Cuba that culminated in the Spanish–American War. He met with Lord Salisbury in October 1897 and gained assurances Britain would not intervene if the U.S. found it necessary to go to war against Spain. Hay's role was "to make friends and to pass along the English point of view to Washington". Hay spent much of early 1898 on an extended trip to the Middle East, and did not return to London until the last week of March, by which time the USS Maine had exploded in Havana harbor. During the war, he worked to ensure U.S.–British amity, and British acceptance of the U.S. occupation of the Philippines—Salisbury and his government preferred that the U.S. have the islands than have them fall into the hands of the Germans. Hay succeeded in making sure that the British were kept "in the loop" with regards to the U.S. invasion of Cuba, and in both reassuring the British that none of their interests in Cuba would be harmed by the invasion, while simultaneously communicating those interests to the McKinley administration (McKinley was himself keen on maintaining a good relationship with the British).
In its early days, Hay described the war "as necessary as it is righteous". In July, writing to former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, who had gained wartime glory by leading the Rough Riders volunteer regiment, Hay made a description of the war for which, according to Zeitz, he "is best remembered by many students of American history":
> It has been a splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that Fortune that loves the brave. It is now to be concluded, I hope, with that fine good nature, which is, after all, the distinguishing trait of the American character.
Secretary Sherman had resigned on the eve of war, and been replaced by his first assistant, William R. Day. One of McKinley's Canton cronies, with little experience of statecraft, Day was never intended as more than a temporary wartime replacement. With America about to splash her flag across the Pacific, McKinley needed a secretary with stronger credentials. On August 14, 1898, Hay received a telegram from McKinley that Day would head the American delegation to the peace talks with Spain, and that Hay would be the new Secretary of State. After some indecision, Hay, who did not think he could decline and still remain as ambassador, accepted. British response to Hay's promotion was generally positive, and Queen Victoria, after he took formal leave of her at Osborne House, invited him again the following day, and subsequently pronounced him, "the most interesting of all the Ambassadors I have known."
## Secretary of State
### McKinley years
John Hay was sworn in as Secretary of State on September 30, 1898. He needed little introduction to Cabinet meetings, and sat at the President's right hand. Meetings were held in the Cabinet Room of the White House, where he found his old office and bedroom each occupied by several clerks. Now responsible for 1,300 federal employees, he leaned heavily for administrative help on his old friend Alvey Adee, the second assistant.
Hay believed that America's most valuable foreign relationship "by far" was its relationship with Great Britain. As Secretary of State he did everything he could to cultivate a positive relationship with London. Eventually this proved successful, one example of this success being the Hay–Pauncefote Treaty. Hay formed a habit of confiding in the British, and sharing sensitive intelligence with them, while at the same time shutting out the governments of Spain, France, Germany and Russia. Senator Mark Hanna remarked that "Hay and McKinley are outrageously pro-British." The French ambassador remarked that "Hay is friendly to the British and unfriendly to us, we should regard him with much suspicion."
By the time Hay took office, the war was effectively over and it had been decided to strip Spain of her overseas empire and transfer at least part of it to the United States. At the time of Hay's swearing-in, McKinley was still undecided whether to take the Philippines, but in October finally decided to do so, and Hay sent instructions to Day and the other peace commissioners to insist on it. Spain yielded, and the result was the Treaty of Paris, narrowly ratified by the Senate in February 1899 over the objections of anti-imperialists.
#### Open Door Policy
By the 1890s, China had become a major trading partner for Western nations and newly westernized Japan. China had had its army severely weakened by several disastrous wars, and several foreign nations took the opportunity to negotiate treaties with China that allowed them to control various coastal cities-known as treaty ports-for use as military bases or trading centers. Within those jurisdictions, the nation in possession often gave preference to its own citizens in trade or in developing infrastructure such as railroads. Although the United States did not claim any parts of China, a third of the China trade was carried in American ships, and having an outpost near there was a major factor in deciding to retain the former Spanish colony of the Philippines in the Treaty of Paris.
Hay had been concerned about the Far East since the 1870s. As Ambassador, he had attempted to forge a common policy with the British, but the United Kingdom was willing to acquire territorial concessions in China (such as Hong Kong) to guard its interests there, whereas McKinley was not. In March 1898, Hay warned that Russia, Germany, and France were seeking to exclude Britain and America from the China trade, but he was disregarded by Sherman, who accepted assurances to the contrary from Russia and Germany.
McKinley was of the view that equality of opportunity for American trade in China was key to success there, rather than colonial acquisitions; that Hay shared these views was one reason for his appointment as Secretary of State. Many influential Americans, seeing coastal China being divided into spheres of influence, urged McKinley to join in; still, in his annual message to Congress in December 1898, he stated that as long as Americans were not discriminated against, he saw no need for the United States to become "an actor in the scene".
As Secretary of State, it was Hay's responsibility to put together a workable China policy. He was advised by William Rockhill, an old China hand. Also influential was Charles Beresford, a British Member of Parliament who gave a number of speeches to American businessmen, met with McKinley and Hay, and in a letter to the secretary stated that "it is imperative for American interests as well as our own that the policy of the 'open door' should be maintained". Assuring that all would play on an even playing field in China would give the foreign powers little incentive to dismember the Chinese Empire through territorial acquisition.
In mid-1899, the British inspector of Chinese maritime customs, Alfred Hippisley, visited the United States. In a letter to Rockhill, a friend, he urged that the United States and other powers agree to uniform Chinese tariffs, including in the enclaves. Rockhill passed the letter on to Hay, and subsequently summarized the thinking of Hippisley and others, that there should be "an open market through China for our trade on terms of equality with all other foreigners". Hay was in agreement, but feared Senate and popular opposition, and wanted to avoid Senate ratification of a treaty. Rockhill drafted the first Open Door note, calling for equality of commercial opportunity for foreigners in China.
Hay formally issued his Open Door note on September 6, 1899. This was not a treaty, and did not require the approval of the Senate. Most of the powers had at least some caveats, and negotiations continued through the remainder of the year. On March 20, 1900, Hay announced that all powers had agreed, and he was not contradicted. Former secretary Day wrote to Hay, congratulating him, "moving at the right time and in the right manner, you have secured a diplomatic triumph in the 'open door' in China of the first importance to your country".
#### Boxer Rebellion
Little thought was given to the Chinese reaction to the Open Door note; the Chinese minister in Washington, Wu Ting-fang, did not learn of it until he read of it in the newspapers. Among those in China who opposed Western influence there was a movement in Shantung Province, in the north, that became known as the Fists of Righteous Harmony, or Boxers, after the martial arts they practiced. The Boxers were especially angered by missionaries and their converts. As late as June 1900, Rockhill dismissed the Boxers, contending that they would soon disband. By the middle of that month, the Boxers, joined by imperial troops, had cut the railroad between Peking and the coast, killed many missionaries and converts, and besieged the foreign legations. Hay faced a precarious situation; how to rescue the Americans trapped in Peking, and how to avoid giving the other powers an excuse to partition China, in an election year when there was already Democrat opposition to what they deemed American imperialism.
As American troops were sent to China to relieve the nation's legation, Hay sent a letter to foreign powers (often called the Second Open Door note), stating while the United States wanted to see lives preserved and the guilty punished, it intended that China not be dismembered. Hay issued this on July 3, 1900, suspecting that the powers were quietly making private arrangements to divide up China. Communication between the foreign legations and the outside world had been cut off, and the personnel there were falsely presumed slaughtered, but Hay realized that Minister Wu could get a message in, and Hay was able to establish communication. Hay suggested to the Chinese government that it now cooperate for its own good. When the foreign relief force, principally Japanese but including 2,000 Americans, relieved the legations and sacked Peking, China was made to pay a huge indemnity but there was no cession of land.
#### Death of McKinley
McKinley's vice president, Garret Hobart, had died in November 1899. Under the laws then in force, this made Hay next in line to the presidency should anything happen to McKinley. There was a presidential election in 1900, and McKinley was unanimously renominated at the Republican National Convention that year. He allowed the convention to make its own choice of running mate, and it selected Roosevelt, by then governor of New York. Senator Hanna bitterly opposed that choice, but nevertheless raised millions for the McKinley/Roosevelt ticket, which was elected.
Hay accompanied McKinley on his nationwide train tour in mid-1901, during which both men visited California and saw the Pacific Ocean for the only times in their lives. The summer of 1901 was tragic for Hay; his older son Adelbert, who had been consul in Pretoria during the Boer War and was about to become McKinley's personal secretary, died in a fall from a hotel window.
Secretary Hay was at The Fells when McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, on September 6 in Buffalo. With Vice President Roosevelt and much of the cabinet hastening to the bedside of McKinley, who had been operated on (it was thought successfully) soon after the shooting, Hay planned to go to Washington to manage the communication with foreign governments, but presidential secretary George Cortelyou urged him to come to Buffalo. He traveled to Buffalo on September 10; hearing on his arrival an account of the President's recovery, Hay responded that McKinley would die. He was more cheerful after visiting McKinley, giving a statement to the press, and went to Washington, as Roosevelt and other officials also dispersed. Hay was about to return to New Hampshire on the 13th, when word came that McKinley was dying. Hay remained at his office and the next morning, on the way to Buffalo, the former Rough Rider received from Hay his first communication as head of state, officially informing President Roosevelt of McKinley's death.
### Theodore Roosevelt administration
#### Staying on
Hay, again next in line to the presidency, remained in Washington as McKinley's body was transported to the capital by funeral train, and stayed there as the late president was taken to Canton for interment. He had admired McKinley, describing him as "awfully like Lincoln in many respects" and wrote to a friend, "what a strange and tragic fate it has been of mine—to stand by the bier of three of my dearest friends, Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, three of the gentlest of men, all risen to be head of the State, and all done to death by assassins".
By letter, Hay offered his resignation to Roosevelt while the new president was still in Buffalo, amid newspaper speculation that Hay would be replaced. When Hay met the funeral train in Washington, Roosevelt greeted him at the station and immediately told him he must stay on as secretary. According to Zeitz, "Roosevelt's accidental ascendance to the presidency made John Hay an essential anachronism ... the wise elder statesman and senior member of the cabinet, he was indispensable to TR, who even today remains the youngest president ever".
The deaths of his son and of McKinley were not the only griefs Hay suffered in 1901—on September 26, John Nicolay died after a long illness, as did Hay's close friend Clarence King on Christmas Eve.
#### Panama
Hay's involvement in the efforts to have a canal joining the oceans in Central America went back to his time as Assistant Secretary of State under Hayes, when he served as translator for Ferdinand de Lesseps in his efforts to interest the American government in investing in his canal company. President Hayes was only interested in the idea of a canal under American control, which de Lesseps's project would not be. By the time Hay became Secretary of State, de Lesseps's project in Panama (then a Colombian province) had collapsed, as had an American-run project in Nicaragua. The 1850 Clayton–Bulwer Treaty (between the United States and Britain) forbade the United States from building a Central American canal that it exclusively controlled, and Hay, from early in his tenure, sought the removal of this restriction. But the Canadians, for whose foreign policy Britain was still available, saw the canal matter as their greatest leverage to get other disputes resolved in their favor, persuaded Salisbury not to resolve it independently. Shortly before Hay took office, Britain and the U.S. agreed to establish a Joint High Commission to adjudicate unsettled matters, which met in late 1898 but made slow progress, especially on the Canada-Alaska boundary.
The Alaska issue became less contentious in August 1899 when the Canadians accepted a provisional boundary pending final settlement. With Congress anxious to begin work on a canal bill, and increasingly likely to ignore the Clayton-Bulwer restriction, Hay and British Ambassador Julian Pauncefote began work on a new treaty in January 1900. The first Hay–Pauncefote Treaty was sent to the Senate the following month, where it met a cold reception, as the terms forbade the United States from blockading or fortifying the canal, that was to be open to all nations in wartime as in peace. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee added an amendment allowing the U.S. to fortify the canal, then in March postponed further consideration until after the 1900 election. Hay submitted his resignation, which McKinley refused. The treaty, as amended, was ratified by the Senate in December, but the British would not agree to the changes.
Despite the lack of agreement, Congress was enthusiastic about a canal, and was inclined to move forward, with or without a treaty. Authorizing legislation was slowed by discussion on whether to take the Nicaraguan or Panamanian route. Much of the negotiation of a revised treaty, allowing the U.S. to fortify the canal, took place between Hay's replacement in London, Joseph H. Choate, and the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, and the second Hay–Pauncefote Treaty was ratified by the Senate by a large margin on December 6, 1901.
Seeing that the Americans were likely to build a Nicaragua Canal, the owners of the defunct French company, including Philippe Bunau-Varilla, who still had exclusive rights to the Panama route, lowered their price. Beginning in early 1902, President Roosevelt became a backer of the latter route, and Congress passed legislation for it, if it could be secured within a reasonable time. In June, Roosevelt told Hay to take personal charge of the negotiations with Colombia. Later that year, Hay began talks with Colombia's acting minister in Washington, Tomás Herrán. The Hay–Herrán Treaty, granting \$10 million to Colombia for the right to build a canal, plus \$250,000 annually, was signed on January 22, 1903, and ratified by the United States Senate two months later. In August, however, the treaty was rejected by the Colombian Senate.
Roosevelt was minded to build the canal anyway, using an earlier treaty with Colombia that gave the U.S. transit rights in regard to the Panama Railroad. Hay predicted "an insurrection on the Isthmus [of Panama] against that regime of folly and graft ... at Bogotá". Bunau-Varilla gained meetings with both men, and assured them that a revolution, and a Panamanian government more friendly to a canal, was coming. In October, Roosevelt ordered Navy ships to be stationed near Panama. The Panamanians duly revolted in early November 1903, with Colombian interference deterred by the presence of U.S. forces. By prearrangement, Bunau-Varilla was appointed representative of the nascent nation in Washington, and quickly negotiated the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, signed on November 18, giving the United States the right to build the canal in a zone 10 miles (16 km) wide, over which the U.S. would exercise full jurisdiction. This was less than satisfactory to the Panamanian diplomats who arrived in Washington shortly after the signing, but they did not dare renounce it. The treaty was approved by the two nations, and work on the Panama Canal began in 1904. Hay wrote to Secretary of War Elihu Root, praising "the perfectly regular course which the President did follow" as much preferable to armed occupation of the isthmus.
#### Relationship with Roosevelt, other events
Hay had met the President's father, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., during the Civil War, and during his time at the Tribune came to know the adolescent "Teddy", twenty years younger than himself. Although before becoming president Roosevelt often wrote fulsome letters of praise to Secretary Hay, his letters to others then and later were less complimentary. Hay felt Roosevelt too impulsive, and privately opposed his inclusion on the ticket in 1900, though he quickly wrote a congratulatory note after the convention.
As President and Secretary of State, the two men took pains to cultivate a cordial relationship. Roosevelt read all ten volumes of the Lincoln biography and in mid-1903, wrote to Hay that by then "I have had a chance to know far more fully what a really great Secretary of State you are". Hay for his part publicly praised Roosevelt as "young, gallant, able, [and] brilliant", words that Roosevelt wrote that he hoped would be engraved on his tombstone.
Privately, and in correspondence with others, they were less generous: Hay grumbled that while McKinley would give him his full attention, Roosevelt was always busy with others, and it would be "an hour's wait for a minute's talk". Roosevelt, after Hay's death in 1905, wrote to Senator Lodge that Hay had not been "a great Secretary of State ... under me he accomplished little ... his usefulness to me was almost exclusively the usefulness of a fine figurehead". Nevertheless, when Roosevelt successfully sought election in his own right in 1904, he persuaded the aging and infirm Hay to campaign for him, and Hay gave a speech linking the administration's policies with those of Lincoln: "there is not a principle avowed by the Republican party to-day which is out of harmony with his [Lincoln's] teaching or inconsistent with his character." Kushner and Sherrill suggested that the differences between Hay and Roosevelt were more style than ideological substance.
In December 1902, the German government asked Roosevelt to arbitrate its dispute with Venezuela over unpaid debts. Hay did not think this appropriate, as Venezuela also owed the U.S. money, and quickly arranged for the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague to step in. Hay supposedly said, as final details were being worked out, "I have it all arranged. If Teddy will keep his mouth shut until tomorrow noon!" Hay and Roosevelt also differed over the composition of the Joint High Commission that was to settle the Alaska boundary dispute. The commission was to be composed of "impartial jurists" and the British and Canadians duly appointed notable judges. Roosevelt appointed politicians, including Secretary Root and Senator Lodge. Although Hay was supportive of the President's choices in public, in private he protested loudly to Roosevelt, complained by letter to his friends, and offered his resignation. Roosevelt declined it, but the incident confirmed him in his belief that Hay was too much of an Anglophile to be trusted where Britain was concerned. The American position on the boundary dispute was imposed on Canada by a 4–2 vote, with the one English judge joining the three Americans.
One incident involving Hay that benefitted Roosevelt politically was the kidnapping of Greek-American playboy Ion Perdicaris in Morocco by chieftain Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli, an opponent of Sultan Abdelaziz. Raisuli demanded a ransom, but also wanted political prisoners to be released and control of Tangier in place of the military governor. Raisuli supposed Perdicaris to be a wealthy American, and hoped United States pressure would secure his demands. In fact, Perdicaris, though born in New Jersey, had renounced his citizenship during the Civil War to avoid Confederate confiscation of property in South Carolina, and had accepted Greek naturalization, a fact not generally known until years later, but that decreased Roosevelt's appetite for military action. The sultan was ineffective in dealing with the incident, and Roosevelt considered seizing the Tangier waterfront, source of much of Abdelaziz's income, as a means of motivating him. With Raisuli's demands escalating, Hay, with Roosevelt's approval, finally cabled the consul-general in Tangier, Samuel Gummeré:
> We want Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead. We desire least possible complications with Morocco or other Powers. You will not arrange for landing marines or seizing customs house without specific direction from the [State] department.
The 1904 Republican National Convention was in session, and the Speaker of the House, Joseph Cannon, its chair, read the first sentence of the cable—and only the first sentence—to the convention, electrifying what had been a humdrum coronation of Roosevelt. "The results were perfect. This was the fighting Teddy that America loved, and his frenzied supporters—and American chauvinists everywhere—roared in delight." In fact, by then the sultan had already agreed to the demands, and Perdicaris was released. What was seen as tough talk boosted Roosevelt's election chances.
#### Final months and death
Hay never fully recovered from the death of his son Adelbert, writing in 1904 to his close friend Lizzie Cameron that "the death of our boy made my wife and me old, at once and for the rest of our lives". Gale described Hay in his final years as a "saddened, slowly dying old man".
Although Hay gave speeches in support of Roosevelt, he spent much of the fall of 1904 at his New Hampshire house or with his younger brother Charles, who was ill in Boston. After the election, Roosevelt asked Hay to remain another four years. Hay asked for time to consider, but the President did not allow it, announcing to the press two days later that Hay would stay at his post. Early 1905 saw futility for Hay, as a number of treaties he had negotiated were defeated or amended by the Senate—one involving the British dominion of Newfoundland due to Senator Lodge's fears it would harm his fisherman constituents. Others, promoting arbitration, were voted down or amended because the Senate did not want to be bypassed in the settlement of international disputes.
By Roosevelt's inauguration on March 4, 1905, Hay's health was so bad that both his wife and his friend Henry Adams insisted on his going to Europe, where he could rest and get medical treatment. Presidential doctor Presley Rixey issued a statement that Hay was suffering from overwork, but in letters the secretary hinted his conviction that he did not have long to live. An eminent physician in Italy prescribed medicinal baths for Hay's heart condition, and he duly journeyed to Bad Nauheim, near Frankfurt, Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm II was among the monarchs who wrote to Hay asking him to visit, though he declined; Belgian King Leopold II succeeded in seeing him by showing up at his hotel, unannounced. Adams suggested that Hay retire while there was still enough life left in him to do so, and that Roosevelt would be delighted to act as his own Secretary of State. Hay jokingly wrote to sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens that "there is nothing the matter with me except old age, the Senate, and one or two other mortal maladies".
After the course of treatment, Hay went to Paris and began to take on his workload again by meeting with the French foreign minister, Théophile Delcassé. In London, King Edward VII broke protocol by meeting with Hay in a small drawing room, and Hay lunched with Whitelaw Reid, ambassador in London at last. There was not time to see all who wished to see Hay on what he knew was his final visit.
On his return to the United States, despite his family's desire to take him to New Hampshire, the secretary went to Washington to deal with departmental business and "say Ave Caesar! to the President", as Hay put it. He was pleased to learn that Roosevelt was well on his way to settling the Russo-Japanese War, an action for which the President would win the Nobel Peace Prize. Hay left Washington for the last time on June 23, 1905, arriving in New Hampshire the following day. He died there on July 1 of his heart ailment and complications. Hay was interred in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, near the grave of Garfield, in the presence of Roosevelt and many dignitaries, including Robert Lincoln.
## Literary career
### Early works
Hay wrote some poetry while at Brown University, and more during the Civil War. In 1865, early in his Paris stay, Hay penned "Sunrise in the Place de la Concorde", a poem attacking Napoleon III for his reinstitution of the monarchy, depicting the Emperor as having been entrusted with the child Democracy by Liberty, and strangling it with his own hands. In "A Triumph of Order", set in the breakup of the Paris Commune, a boy promises soldiers that he will return from an errand to be executed with his fellow rebels. Much to their surprise, he keeps his word and shouts to them to "blaze away" as "The Chassepots tore the stout young heart,/And saved Society."
In poetry, he sought the revolutionary outcome for other nations that he believed had come to a successful conclusion in the United States. His 1871 poem, "The Prayer of the Romans", recites Italian history up to that time, with the Risorgimento in progress: liberty cannot be truly present until "crosier and crown pass away", when there will be "One freedom, one faith without fetters,/One republic in Italy free!" His stay in Vienna yielded "The Curse of Hungary", in which Hay foresees the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After Hay's death in 1905, William Dean Howells suggested that the Europe-themed poems expressed "(now, perhaps, old-fashioned) American sympathy for all the oppressed." Castilian Days, souvenir of Hay's time in Madrid, is a collection of seventeen essays about Spanish history and customs, first published in 1871, although several of the individual chapters appeared in The Atlantic in 1870. It went through eight editions in Hay's lifetime. The Spanish are depicted as afflicted by the "triple curse of crown, crozier, and saber"—most kings and ecclesiastics are presented as useless—and Hay pins his hope in the republican movement in Spain. Gale deems Castilian Days "a remarkable, if biased, book of essays about Spanish civilization".
Pike County Ballads, a grouping of six poems published (with other Hay poetry) as a book in 1871, brought him great success. Written in the dialect of Pike County, Illinois, where Hay went to school as a child, they are approximately contemporaneous with pioneering poems in similar dialect by Bret Harte and there has been debate as to which came first. The poem that brought the greatest immediate reaction was "Jim Bludso", about a boatman who is "no saint" with one wife in Mississippi and another in Illinois. Yet, when his steamboat catches fire, "He saw his duty, a dead-sure thing,—/And went for it, ther and then." Jim holds the burning steamboat against the riverbank until the last passenger gets ashore, at the cost of his life. Hay's narrator states that, "And Christ ain't a-going to be too hard/On a man that died for men." Hay's poem offended some clergymen, but was widely reprinted and even included in anthologies of verse.
### The Bread-Winners
The Bread-Winners, one of the first novels to take an anti-labor perspective, was published anonymously in 1883 (published editions did not bear Hay's name until 1916) and he may have tried to disguise his writing style. The book examines two conflicts: between capital and labor, and between the nouveau riche and old money. In writing it, Hay was influenced by the labor unrest of the 1870s, that affected him personally, as corporations belonging to Stone, his father-in-law, were among those struck, at a time when Hay had been left in charge in Stone's absence. According to historian Scott Dalrymple, "in response, Hay proceeded to write an indictment of organized labor so scathing, so vehement, that he dared not attach his name to it."
The major character is Arthur Farnham, a wealthy Civil War veteran, likely based on Hay. Farnham, who inherited money, is without much influence in municipal politics, as his ticket is defeated in elections, symbolic of the decreasing influence of America's old-money patricians. The villain is Andrew Jackson Offitt (true name Ananias Offitt), who leads the Bread-winners, a labor organization that begins a violent general strike. Peace is restored by a group of veterans led by Farnham, and, at the end, he appears likely to marry Alice Belding, a woman of his own class.
Although unusual among the many books inspired by the labor unrest of the late 1870s in taking the perspective of the wealthy, it was the most successful of them, and was a sensation, gaining many favorable reviews. It was also attacked as an anti-labor polemic with an upper-class bias. There were many guesses as to authorship, with the supposed authors ranging from Hay's friend Henry Adams to New York Governor Grover Cleveland, and the speculation fueled sales.
### Lincoln biography
Early in his presidency, Hay and Nicolay requested and received permission from Lincoln to write his biography. By 1872, Hay was "convinced that we ought to be at work on our 'Lincoln.' I don't think the time for publication has come, but the time for preparation is slipping away." Robert Lincoln in 1874 formally agreed to let Hay and Nicolay use his father's papers; by 1875, they were engaged in research. Hay and Nicolay enjoyed exclusive access to Lincoln's papers, which were not opened to other researchers until 1947. They gathered documents written by others, as well as many of the Civil War books already being published. They at rare times relied on memory, such as Nicolay's recollection of the moment at the 1860 Republican convention when Lincoln was nominated, but for much of the rest relied on research.
Hay began his part of the writing in 1876; the work was interrupted by illnesses of Hay, Nicolay, or family members, or by Hay's writing of The Bread-Winners. By 1885, Hay had completed the chapters on Lincoln's early life, and they were submitted to Robert Lincoln for approval. Sale of the serialization rights to The Century magazine, edited by Hay's friend Richard Gilder, helped give the pair the impetus to bring what had become a massive project to an end.
The published work, Abraham Lincoln: A History, alternates parts in which Lincoln is at center with discussions of contextual matters, such as legislative events or battles. The first serial installment, published in November 1886, received positive reviews. When the ten-volume set emerged in 1890, it was not sold in bookstores, but instead door-to-door, then a common practice. Despite a price of \$50, and the fact that a good part of the work had been serialized, five thousand copies were quickly sold. The books helped forge the modern view of Lincoln as great war leader, against competing narratives that gave more credit to subordinates such as Seward. According to historian Joshua Zeitz, "it is easy to forget how widely underrated Lincoln the president and Lincoln the man were at the time of his death and how successful Hay and Nicolay were in elevating his place in the nation's collective historical memory."
## Assessment and legacy
In 1902, Hay wrote that when he died, "I shall not be much missed except by my wife." Nevertheless, due to his premature death at age 66, he was survived by most of his friends. These included Adams, who although he blamed the pressures of Hay's office, where he was badgered by Roosevelt and many senators, for the Secretary of State's death, admitted that Hay had remained in the position because he feared being bored. He memorialized his friend in the final pages of his autobiographical The Education of Henry Adams: with Hay's death, his own education had ended.
Gale pointed out that Hay "accomplished a great deal in the realm of international statesmanship, and the world may be a better place because of his efforts as secretary of state ... the man was a scintillating ambassador". Yet, Gale felt, any assessment of Hay must include negatives as well, that after his marriage to the wealthy Clara Stone, Hay "allowed his deep-seated love of ease triumph over his Middle Western devotion to work and a fair shake for all." Despite his literary accomplishments, Hay "was often lazy. His first poetry was his best."
Taliaferro suggests that "if Hay put any ... indelible stamp on history, perhaps it was that he demonstrated how the United States ought to comport itself. He, not Roosevelt, was the adult in charge when the nation and the State Department attained global maturity." He quotes John St. Loe Strachey, "All that the world saw was a great gentleman and a great statesman doing his work for the State and for the President with perfect taste, perfect good sense, and perfect good humour".
Hay's efforts to shape Lincoln's image increased his own prominence and reputation in making his association (and that of Nicolay) with the assassinated president ever more remarkable and noteworthy. According to Zeitz, "the greater Lincoln grew in death, the greater they grew for having known him so well, and so intimately, in life. Everyone wanted to know them if only to ask what it had been like—what he had been like." Their answer to that, expressed in ten volumes of biography, Gale wrote, "has been incredibly influential". In 1974, Lincoln scholar Roy P. Basler stated that later biographers such as Carl Sandburg did not "ma[k]e revisions of the essential story told by N.[icolay] & H.[ay]. Zeitz concurs, "Americans today understand Abraham Lincoln much as Nicolay and Hay hoped that they would."
Hay brought about more than 50 treaties, including the Canal-related treaties, and settlement of the Samoan dispute, as a result of which the United States secured what became known as American Samoa. In 1900, Hay negotiated a treaty with Denmark for the cession of the Danish West Indies. That treaty failed in the Danish parliament on a tied vote.
In 1923 Mount Hay, also known as Boundary Peak 167 on the Canada–United States border, was named after John Hay in recognition of his role in negotiating the US-Canada treaty resulting in the Alaska Boundary Tribunal. Brown University's John Hay Library is named for him as well. Hay's New Hampshire estate has been conserved by various organizations. Although he and his family never lived there (Hay died while it was under construction), the Hay-McKinney House, home to the Cleveland History Center and thousands of artifacts, serves to remind Clevelanders of John Hay's lengthy service. During World War II the Liberty ship SS John Hay was built in Panama City, Florida, and named in his honor. Camp John Hay a United States military base established in 1903 in Baguio, Philippines, was named for John Hay, and the base name was maintained by the Philippine government even after its 1991 turnover to Philippine authorities.
According to historian Lewis L. Gould, in his account of McKinley's presidency,
> One of the most entertaining and interesting letter writers who ever ran the State Department, the witty, dapper, and bearded Hay left behind an abundance of documentary evidence on his public career. His name is indelibly linked with that verity of the nation's Asian policy, the Open Door, and he contributed much to the resolution of the longstanding problems with the British. Patient, discreet, and judicious, Hay deserves to stand in the front rank of secretaries of state.
## See also
- History of U.S. foreign policy, 1897–1913
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Chinatown MRT station
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Mass Rapid Transit station in Singapore
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"Chinatown, Singapore",
"Mass Rapid Transit (Singapore) stations",
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Chinatown MRT station is an underground Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) interchange station on the North East (NEL) and Downtown (DTL) lines in Outram, Singapore. It serves the ethnic enclave of Chinatown. Situated at the junction of Eu Tong Sen Street, New Bridge Road and Upper Cross Street, the station is near several landmarks, including the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, Masjid Jamae (Chulia), Chinatown Point and People's Park Complex.
First announced as People's Park MRT station in March 1996, the NEL station was one of the most challenging projects undertaken during that line's construction. It involved multiple diversions of the main roads and the Eu Tong Sen Canal, in addition to the preservation of the Garden Bridge. The NEL station was completed on 20 June 2003. In March 2007, it was announced that the NEL will interchange with the DTL at this station. The DTL platforms of the station opened on 22 December 2013 as part of Stage 1 of the line.
Each of the six entrances has glass structures, with the Pagoda Street entrance having a pavilion-style transparent roof structure and the DTL entrance having an elliptical shape. The station features two artworks as part of the MRT network's Art-in-Transit programme. The NEL concourse and platforms feature calligraphy as part of The Phoenix's-Eye Domain by Tan Swie Hian, while the DTL concourse walls feature artworks of clothes lines as part of Flying Colours by Cheo Chai Hiang.
## History
### North East line station (1996–2003)
Chinatown station was first announced as People's Park station, along with the 15 other North East line (NEL) stations, by Communications Minister Mah Bow Tan on 4 March 1996. The contract for the design and construction of the station – Contract 709 – was awarded to a joint venture between Gammon Construction and Econ Piling in June 1997 at S\$141.5 million (US\$ million in ).
The construction of the NEL station was one of the most challenging projects on the line. Arterial roads like New Bridge Road, Eu Tong Sen Street, and connecting streets had to be rerouted, closed and reinstated several times. These closures took place through seven major phases and numerous sub-stages from December 1997 to March 2002. The bus stops had to be shifted accordingly. As a result of the rerouted roads and the construction barriers, pedestrians had to take longer routes around the construction site to their desired destinations. In addition, businesses in the area were affected by the noise and construction dust, leading to tarnished goods and a decrease in patronage. The contractors made efforts to minimise these effects, such as using quieter machinery and cleaning the vehicles exiting the worksite. During the Lunar New Year in 2001, a temporary bridge was constructed to connect the two sides of Pagoda Street so pedestrians could walk over the entrance work site.
Following engagements with the local community, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) implemented measures such as shifting worksite hoarding aside to maximise walking space, working with artists to paint the worksite panels, minimising the worksite space at Pagoda Street and renovating the Garden Bridge to allow its integration with the station. A temporary taxi stand was installed at Upper Cross Street to serve the retail development of Chinatown Point. The LTA also built a temporary pedestrian staircase from the shops along New Bridge Road to the Garden Bridge.
Prior to the construction, the utilities at the site had to be diverted at a cost of S\$7 million (US\$ million in ) so the utilities were not damaged during the station's construction. The utilities had to be protected or substituted during the manoeuvre, and took some time due to the poor documentation of the location of the old pipes and cables. The Eu Tong Sen Canal running through the station site had to be dismantled and diverted into four 300 m (980 ft) steel pipes to connect the unaffected parts of the canal. It was planned to use steel beams to support the canal during ground excavation and the station's construction, but this would risk damaging the canal, causing the site to flood. The more time-consuming and expensive alternative to divert the canal into the 2.1 m (6.9 ft) diameter pipes would minimise such risks and allow sufficient space for the construction machinery. The LTA engineers decided to implement this alternative, which became one of the largest drainage diversion projects in Singapore. The pipes were suspended below the temporary road decking. After the station's construction, the canal, now wider and deeper, was rebuilt above the station.
The construction also involved the preservation of Garden Bridge as it is a social and cultural landmark in Chinatown. Initially, there were plans to dismantle the bridge due to the columns and foundations being in the way of MRT works, but the LTA reversed its decision and decided to underpin the bridge using massive steel trusses. Certain sections of the bridge's central support were cut away to allow more space for efficient excavation and construction. The support columns were rebuilt after the station's completion.
Due to the soft marine clay above the stable sedimentary soil, there were a few cave-ins at the site during construction. On 3 July 1999, an unused section of the old canal caved in, forming a hole three metres (9.8 ft) deep. Several I-beams, a compressor and a small machine, which fell into the hole, were retrieved using a crane. It was discovered that some soil had seeped through a gap in the perimeter wall of the station, resulting in the collapse of the structure. The gap was made to accommodate a sewer pipe. In the evening of 22 November, a section of Eu Tong Sen Street collapsed, and it was closed along with neighbouring streets. The collapse formed an eight-by-five-metre (26 by 16 ft) hole with a depth of up to one metre (3.3 ft). Nobody was injured and the surrounding buildings remained intact. On 2 December that year, a two-centimetre (0.79 in) depression, along with cracks, was discovered on the road 15 metres (49 ft) away from the cave-in site, resulting in another road closure. It was found during an inspection of soil movement above the tunnelling machine underneath the street. One of the lanes remained open for buses. The road was dug open to inspect the utility pipes, cables and the two steel pipes underneath the road. Cement was pumped into the ground to stabilise the soil before the road was reopened to traffic on 5 December.
By mid-2002, the major roads were reinstated with most of the construction work complete. In conjunction with the station's opening, the surrounding shopping complexes People's Park Complex and the OG Shopping Centre underwent renovations and redevelopment. The former Majestic theatre near the station had also been refurbished and converted into a retail mall. With the NEL commencing services on 20 June 2003, it was expected that the station would bring further development to the area with more investments and crowds.
As part of a joint emergency preparedness exercise by the LTA and train operator SBS Transit, security screenings were held at the station on 9 December 2022. Commuters entering the station were redirected to a set of fare gates near Exits A and G with Exit F closed. Such exercises were conducted to test established response protocols and maintain vigilance for quicker and more effective responses during emergencies and heightened security situations.
### Downtown line station and further plans (2007–2013)
During the NEL station's construction, provisions were made for Chinatown station to link with a future MRT line. In October 1997, it was announced that the station would become the terminus of the proposed 12-kilometre (7.5 mi) Marina Line. In subsequent plans, however, the Chinatown branch was scrapped. The project was scaled down to six stations that would form the first stage of the Circle Line (CCL).
On 26 April 2005, Today reported that soil tests were being conducted around Chinatown station, raising speculations of a possible rail link between Chinatown and Marina Bay via a new developing downtown. However, the LTA expressed they had yet to decide whether to build such a line. On 14 June, the LTA announced that Chinatown station would be the terminus of the Downtown Extension (DTE) from Milennia station (now Promenade). The DTE, initially planned to be a branch of the CCL, was revised to be the first stage of the Downtown line (DTL) in 2007.
In preparation for the DTL construction, the utilities underneath Cross Street and Upper Cross Street were diverted into a 500-metre (1,600 ft) long Common Utility Trench (CUT). The 7-metre (23 ft) wide and 3.5-metre (11 ft) deep CUT, located along Pickering Street and Church Street, was constructed using the cut and cover method. The contract for the CUT construction was awarded to Hwa Seng Builder Pte Ltd on 18 August 2006 for S\$6.4 million (US\$ million). Contract 909 for the construction of the DTL station and associated tunnels was awarded to Gammon Construction at S\$160.3 million (US\$ million) in August 2007. On 12 February 2008, the LTA held a ceremony at this station to mark the beginning of the DTL's construction.
During the construction, traffic was diverted to Cross Street and Upper Cross Street from March 2007 to the end of June 2008. The area in front of Hong Lim Complex and Chinatown Point had been closed off to build the support wall for the station and tunnels. Subsequently, a section of Upper Cross Street between Yue Hwa Building and Block 34 was realigned from 18 January 2010 until the station's completion in 2013. On 17 January 2013, the then-Minister of Transport Lui Tuck Yew visited the station, where he announced the 2013 Land Transport Master Plan. An open house was held on 7 December 2013, before the DTL station commenced operations on 22 December. The station was the terminus of the line until the opening of DTL Stage 3 to Expo station on 21 October 2017.
Extending the DTL tunnels from Chinatown to Fort Canning station was a challenge, due to the narrow space between two Housing and Development Board (HDB) blocks and the State Court along the route. In addition, the contractors had to divert the Singapore River for the tunnels’ construction. The DTL tunnels had to be stacked to overcome the space constraints. Before deciding on the route taken to cross the Singapore River, 20 other tunnel routes were considered by LTA engineers but were deemed too unsafe or too damaging to the environment or both. The diversion of the river was necessary as tunnelling underneath would risk sinking or flooding. The tunnel boring machine used could be obstructed by debris that remained stuck into the riverbed. There were considerations to dam the river but it would have disrupted businesses and tour boat operations along the river.
The river diversion, which started in 2012, involved removing components of the river embankment, constructing a series of dams, strengthening the soil and excavating a new 40-by-100-by-7-metre (131 by 328 by 23 ft) canal on the river's west bank. After the canal was built, part of the original river course was drained and filled with soil for the tunnels' construction. The debris along the tunnels’ routes were removed using piling rigs before tunnelling works commenced. To ensure the construction would not pollute the river (which is connected to the Marina Reservoir), the LTA had to maintain adequate hydraulic flows. After boring through the area, the river was realigned to its original course.
## Station details
### Location
The station is located within the Singapore Chinese ethnic enclave of Chinatown. The NEL station is situated underground between Eu Tong Sen Street and New Bridge Road, while the DTL is underneath Cross Street. The NEL site was chosen to avoid having to demolish the historical shophouses and buildings in the area.
In addition, this station site is closely linked to shopping centres and busy pedestrian areas, such as Chinatown Point, Hong Lim Complex, People's Park Complex and The Majestic. Surrounding landmarks include the religious sites of Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, Masjid Jamae (Chulia), Fairfield Methodist Church, the Sri Mariamman Temple and the Sri Layan Sithi Vinayagar Temple. The station serves public amenities including the State Courts, Family Justice Courts, Chinatown Visitor Centre and the Kreta Ayer Community Centre.
### Services
Chinatown station is served by the NEL and DTL. The station code is NE4/DT19 as reflected on official maps. On the NEL, the station is between the Outram Park and Clarke Quay stations, with trains running every 2.5 to 5 minutes, depending on peak hours. On the DTL, the station is between the Telok Ayer and Fort Canning stations, with trains on the line passing every 2.5 to 5 minutes.
### Design
The station has two underground levels and six entrances. The NEL station has a length of 281 metres (922 ft) and a depth of 25 metres (82 ft). The station is unusually long, allowing connections to various surrounding places of interest. Alluding to the area's "rich oriental culture", the station is decorated with Chinese calligraphy on the floors of the station platforms and concourse as well as a mural on the wall across the concourse. The DTL station is 450 metres (1,480 ft) long, with plans to connect the station with the adjacent Telok Ayer station via an underground retail link.
The NEL station is designated as a Civil Defence (CD) shelter. It is designed to accommodate at least 7,500 people and withstand airstrikes and chemical attacks. Equipment essential for the operations in the CD shelter is mounted on shock absorbers to prevent damage during a bombing. When electrical supply to the shelter is disrupted, there are backup generators to keep operations going. The shelter has dedicated built-in decontamination chambers and dry toilets with collection bins that will send human waste out of the shelter.
The NEL and DTL platforms are wheelchair-accessible. A tactile system, consisting of tiles with rounded or elongated raised studs, guides visually impaired commuters through the station, with dedicated routes that connect the station entrances to the platforms or between the lines. There are wider fare gates that allow easier access for wheelchair users into the station.
Exit A to Pagoda Street features a pavilion-style transparent roof-structure which provides an unobstructed view of the shophouses and allows natural light into the station. As Pagoda Street is in a low-lying area vulnerable to flooding, the entrance has a mechanical flood barrier, eliminating the need to elevate the entrance to a level that would obstruct the view of the street. During a flood, water would flow into a chamber underneath the barrier's floor, causing the barrier to rise against the overflow. The other station entrances employ glass structures that allow views of the surrounding developments and natural lighting. The new elliptical entrance serving the DTL station reflects the elliptical façade of the nearby Hong Lim Complex.
## Public artwork
The station displays two artworks as part of the MRT network's Art-in-Transit programme – a showcase of public artworks on the MRT network.
### The Phoenix's-Eye Domain
Tan Swie Hian's The Phoenix's-Eye Domain is a wall mural representing the journey of Singapore's Chinese immigrants, supplemented by a poem written in three sets of rhyming couplets. The colourful mural, depicting a soaring phoenix in various forms, is displayed at the NEL concourse level, while the poem is engraved on the floors of the station platforms and concourse. The artist intended for the poem to be a "footnote" to the mural, while the mural is supposed to be a visual realisation of the poem.
Taking inspiration from the description of the mythical phoenix in the Chinese classic text "Shan Hai Jing", the artist uses the phoenix as a symbol of perseverance and strength of the first Chinese settlers. Not intending to just use recognisable depictions of old Chinatown, Tan wished to capture the enduring and noble spirit of the ancestors, who are depicted in the artwork as helping build modern-day Singapore. In the mural, the phoenix flies over the waterfront of Singapore, which is by two kris-shaped rocks. These two rocks, which once existed at the waters' edge, were used as indicators by early Chinese navigators, who referred to Singapore as the "Dragon's Teeth Gate". Written on the phoenix's body are five characters, each with different meanings: Virtue, Righteousness, Civility, Benevolence and Credibility, regarded to be the five core values of man.
In another section of the artwork, the phoenix is shown in its full glory, being surrounded by a myriad of birds. This was intended to be an auspicious sign of Singapore's prosperity. In the last segment of the mural, the birds and phoenix combine into one, symbolising the "universal energy" of the cycle of life. The coolies on the mural are depicted as victorious strong men in classical Greek style rather than defeated labourers, as the artist felt the labourers were already well-built. Before the artwork was reproduced in the United Kingdom, Tan first drew out the work by hand. Instead of watering them down via a painting medium, Tan applied oil and acrylic paints directly onto the canvas. This was done to accomplish vibrant colour transitions for the work. However, it was difficult to reproduce this colour treatment when the mural was being produced in the United Kingdom. Through experimentation, the specialist company in Birmingham adopted a seven-colour process to closely match the original's colours on the final artwork in vitreous enamel.
The poetry, composed in a semi-cursive calligraphic script, employs the couplet – a pair of complementary verses set side by side. The calligraphy was first written in ink on rice paper before being scanned onto a computer and reproduced on the 1.2 m<sup>2</sup> (13 sq ft) granite tiles. Each of the Chinese characters was cut out from grey slabs and inlaid into slabs of a darker tone, hollowed out for the characters. Placing the work on the floor, however, was considered unusual, as calligraphic works were usually placed on walls in auspicious positions. Tan explained that since life comes from earth, the earth is as auspicious as the sky. The artist intended to lay the characters on the same earth the first settlers had set foot on.
### Flying Colours
The DTL concourse level features Flying Colours by Cheo Chai Hiang. The artwork depicts several clothes lines, a scene representing Singapore's high-rise HDB flats. The clothes lines changes slightly when viewed from different angles (i.e. a lenticular print). The artist sought to transform the "mundane" aspect of the scenery into something "festive and celebratory", while creating an illusion of clothes "flying in the wind". The angle of the clothes lines directs commuters to the platforms.
The DTL artwork has drawn mixed reactions from other artists. Jeremy Sharma, the artist of Holland Beat at Holland Village station, regarded the work as "original and attractive with a lot of playful humour". On the other hand, Yek Wong, the artist who created the artwork at one-north station, felt that the work did not quite deliver the concept and suggested it could be more "visually engaging".
|
77,262 |
Magnavox Odyssey
| 1,170,855,785 |
First commercial home video game console
|
[
"1970s toys",
"1972 in video gaming",
"Computer-related introductions in 1972",
"Discontinued video game consoles",
"First-generation video game consoles",
"Home video game consoles",
"Light guns",
"Magnavox consoles",
"Monochrome video game consoles",
"Products and services discontinued in 1975",
"Video game lists by platform"
] |
The Magnavox Odyssey is the first commercial home video game console. The hardware was designed by a small team led by Ralph H. Baer at Sanders Associates, while Magnavox completed development and released it in the United States in September 1972 and overseas the following year. The Odyssey consists of a white, black, and brown box that connects to a television set, and two rectangular controllers attached by wires. It is capable of displaying three square dots and one line of varying height on the screen in monochrome black and white, with differing behavior for the dots depending on the game played. Players place plastic overlays on the screen to display additional visual elements for each game, and one or two players for each game control their dots with the knobs and buttons on the controller by the rules given for the game. The console cannot generate audio or track scores. The Odyssey console came packaged with dice, paper money, and other board game paraphernalia to accompany the games, while a peripheral controller—the first video game light gun—was sold separately.
The idea for a video game console was conceived by Baer in August 1966. Over the next three years he, along with Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch, created seven successive prototype consoles. The seventh, known as the Brown Box, was shown to several manufacturers before Magnavox agreed to produce it in January 1971. After releasing the console through their dealerships, Magnavox sold 69,000 units in its first calendar year and 350,000 by the time the console was discontinued in 1975. The console spawned the Odyssey series of dedicated consoles as well as the 1978 Magnavox Odyssey 2. One of the 28 games made for the system, a ping-pong game, was an inspiration for Atari's successful 1972 Pong arcade game, in turn driving sales of the Odyssey. Patents by Baer and the other developers for the system and the games, including what was termed by a judge as "the pioneering patent of the video game art", formed the basis of a series of lawsuits spanning 20 years, earning Sanders and Magnavox over US\$100 million. The release of the Odyssey marked the beginning of the first generation of video game consoles and was an early part of the rise of the commercial video game industry.
## Design
The Odyssey consists of a black, white, and brown oblong box connected by wires to two rectangular controllers. The console connects to the television set through an included switch box, which allows the player to switch the television input between the Odyssey and the regular television input cable, and presents itself like a television channel on channel three or four, which thereafter became the standard for game consoles. The controllers, designed to sit on a flat surface, contain one button marked Reset on the top of the controller and three knobs: one on the right side of the controller, and two on the left with one extending from the other. The reset button resets individual elements depending on the game, such as making a player's dot visible after it is turned off. The system can be powered by six C batteries, which were included; an optional AC power supply was sold separately. The Odyssey lacks sound capability and can only display monochrome white shapes on a blank black screen.
Internally, the Odyssey architecture is composed of digital computing parts. The circuitry is implemented in diode–transistor logic using discrete transistors and diodes. The games themselves do not use ROM cartridges like later consoles, but instead, use "game cards" composed of printed circuit boards that plug into the console. These cards modify the internal circuitry like a set of switches or jumpers, causing the Odyssey to display different components and react to inputs differently. Multiple games use the same cards, with different instructions given to the player to change the style of the game.
The Odyssey is capable of displaying three square dots and a vertical line on the screen. Two of the dots are controlled by the two players, and the third by the system itself. The main console has two dials, one of which moves the vertical line across the screen, and one which adjusts the speed of the computer-controlled dot. Different games direct the player to adjust the dials to different positions, such as changing the center line of a tennis game into the side wall of a handball game. The games include plastic overlays that stick to the television via static cling to create visuals. Games that use the same game card can have different overlays, which can change a game with the same controls from, for example, a mountain ski path to a movement-based Simon Says game.
In addition to the overlays, the Odyssey came with dice, poker chips, score sheets, play money, and card decks. One peripheral controller was released for the Odyssey, the first video game light gun. Named the Shooting Gallery, the rifle-shaped device registered a hit when pointed at a light source such as a dot on the television screen. Four shooting-based games were included with the light gun.
## Development
In 1951, while working for a military contractor Loral Electronics, engineer Ralph H. Baer was assigned to build a television set; Baer later claimed that while doing so he had the idea to build something into a television set that the owner could control in addition to its normal function of receiving signals from a remote television station. Loral did not pursue the idea, but it returned to Baer in August 1966 while waiting for a bus. Baer, then the head of the Equipment Design Division at military contractor Sanders Associates, came up with the concept of using a television to play games, and the next morning wrote up a four-page proposal for a "game box" that would plug into a television screen, costing around US\$25. The proposed device would transmit a signal that the television set could tune into like a television channel, which Baer referred to as Channel LP, short for "let's play", and he described several games that could be played on it. While electronic computer games had been developed since the start of the 1950s, they were typically only found in large academic or research institutions, and in 1966 no commercial games or video game industry existed, or any form of video games for consumer television sets.
As a "game box" had little to do with the typical military contracts Sanders worked on, Baer picked an empty room and assigned one of his technicians, Bob Tremblay, to work on it with him rather than bring the idea to his bosses. By December 1966, they had completed an initial prototype later christened "TV Game \#1", which could display and move a vertical line on a television screen. Baer demonstrated the prototype to the Sanders director of research and development, Herbert Campman, who hesitantly agreed to fund it for US\$2,000 for labor and US\$500 for materials, making it an official project.
Baer spent the next few months designing further prototypes, and in February 1967, assigned technician Bill Harrison to begin building the project. Harrison spent the next few months in between other projects building out successive modifications to the prototype. Baer, meanwhile, brainstormed with engineer Bill Rusch on ideas for games for the console, resulting in a proposal for the basis of many games later created for the system. Harrison began developing some early games in May, beginning with a two-player game where the players repeatedly press a button in competition to fill or empty a bucket of water, and by June multiple games were completed for what was then a second prototype box. These included a game where players controlled dots chasing each other and a light gun shooter game with a plastic rifle. Baer demonstrated the new prototype to Campman, who enjoyed the shooting game, increased funding, and recommended Baer demonstrate the project to senior management. Baer demonstrated the console to the board, who were largely uninterested, though a couple of members were enthusiastic; nevertheless, CEO Royden Sanders authorized the project to be continued with the aim of selling or licensing the console as a commercial product.
By August 1967, Baer and Harrison completed a more focused prototype machine with fewer components, but found that to even come near to Baer's initial price target of the console would require so much to be excluded that the resulting product would not be very enjoyable. Baer additionally felt that he was not proving successful at designing fun games for the system; to make up for this he formally added Bill Rusch, who had helped him come up with the initial games for the console, to the project. Though the pair found Rusch difficult to work with, he soon proved his value to the team by coming up with a way to display a third, console-controlled spot on the screen in addition to the previous two player-controlled ones, and proposing the development of a ping-pong game. By November, the team, now on their fourth prototype machine, had a ping-pong game, a chasing game, a light gun game, and three types of controllers: joysticks for the chase game, a rifle for the light gun game, and a three dial controller for the ping-pong game. Campman felt that the system was advanced enough to begin trying to find a manufacturer to buy it; they had decided to sell the rights to produce the console, as Sanders was not in the business of making and selling commercial electronics.
The team first approached the cable television industry, and the prototype attracted the attention of TelePrompTer Corporation, who had seen it during a visit. After a few months of talks, cash-flow problems forced TelePrompter to back out in April 1968. The same economic downturn that caused TelePrompter's problems caused financial difficulties at Sanders as well, which put the project on hold after the fifth prototype was developed while simultaneously undergoing large-scale layoffs. It was picked up again in September, this time without Rusch, and went through two more iterations resulting in January 1969 in the seventh prototype, known as the "Brown Box" due to the wood-grain stickers on the casing. With the system now largely complete, as the team began filing for patents they were unsure whom to approach to sell it until a Sanders patent attorney recommended contacting television manufacturers. Baer demonstrated the system to several companies, who all expressed enthusiasm; only RCA wanted to purchase the device, however, and an agreement could not be reached. Soon afterwards, though, RCA executive Bill Enders left RCA for Magnavox and convinced them to look at the console again. The creators of the Brown Box again demonstrated the device to Magnavox in July 1969; they received a tepid reaction from most of the executives, but Vice President of Magnavox Console Products Planning Gerry Martin was in favor, and Magnavox agreed to produce the console. After a long period of negotiations the two companies finally signed an agreement in January 1971.
A team from Magnavox led by George Kent turned the prototype console into a final product. They designed the exterior of the machine and re-engineered some of the internals with consultation from Baer and Harrison; they removed the ability to display color, used only the three dial controller, and changed the system of selecting games from a dial to separate game cards that modified the console's circuitry when plugged into the console. At the time, color televisions were still seen as a luxury item, and the ability to show color would have added additional expense and time spent dealing with FCC testing and regulations. The internal circuitry had been designed with discrete components rather than integrated circuits due to cost concerns, and although integrated circuits were becoming common by 1972 Magnavox did not redesign the circuitry to use them. The games for the system were designed by Ron Bradford of Bradford/Cout Design and adman Steve Lehner, based largely on the ones developed by Baer, Harrison, and Rusch. The product planning for the console was initially overseen by Bob Wiles of the color television division, but was turned over to product manager Bob Fritsche as its own category of product in September 1971. Magnavox named the console first as the Skill-O-Vision while testing, and then released it as the Odyssey. The rifle game was turned into a separately sold add-on game, Shooting Gallery, and Magnavox added paper money, playing cards, and poker chips to the console, to go along with the plastic overlays for the games designed by Bradford that enhanced the primitive visuals. The new additions helped raise the price of the console to . Baer was upset with the board game additions, which he felt were pointless add-ons that would go unused by players. Magnavox performed market surveys and playtests in Los Angeles and Grand Rapids, Michigan, and demonstrated it to dealers in Las Vegas in May 1972. The console was publicly unveiled at a press event at the Tavern on the Green in New York City on May 22, 1972. Magnavox announced the system's launch date of September 1972, with availability restricted to dealers in 18 metropolitan areas, and demonstrated it for the next few months to Magnavox dealerships and media.
## Reception
Magnavox began advertising the Odyssey in mid-September 1972, including an appearance on the game show What's My Line? on October 16, 1972. As the term "video game" was not yet in use, the company described the console as "the new electronic game of the future" and "closed-circuit electronic playground". Magnavox initially ordered 50,000 units, but before release increased its production capabilities and built a larger inventory, as market testing found an enthusiastic response to the console. The Odyssey was sold only through Magnavox dealers, who handled their own advertising in their local markets; the company hoped that as the video game console was the first such product, consumers would visit its stores specifically for it.
There are conflicting reports between Baer and Magnavox employees as to whether Magnavox produced 120,000 or 140,000 consoles in 1972. Magnavox only sold 69,000 units. Baer believed that the low initial sales were due to the high price, and because Magnavox restricted sales to its dealerships and implied that the device only worked with Magnavox televisions. Other sources have stated that dealers may have misled customers to sell more televisions, though advertisements and in-store promotional videos explicitly stated that the Odyssey worked with "any brand TV, black and white or color". Customers unfamiliar with the new device, seeing it was only sold at Magnavox dealerships, may have misunderstood its interoperability.
Magnavox assistant product planner Don Emry said that the sales were in line with the original projections, if not the production run. After the initial holiday season Magnavox considered discontinuing the console, but the modest continuing demand, along with high customer satisfaction reports in surveys, convinced it to continue stocking the console. Magnavox published two catalogs each year, one before the Christmas season and another for its annual sale in January. The Odyssey did not appear in the pre-Christmas 1972 catalog, but the January 1973 catalog depicted the console in a two-page spread with pictures of bundled and optional games and the light gun. Fritsche's team proposed the creation of alternate versions of the Odyssey, a "lite" version with five games and a version with four controllers and a dozen new or updated games. Baer proposed an add-on that would add sound to games, and a putting controller and associated golf game. Magnavox rejected the proposals, instead releasing four games for sale in 1973, designed wholly or in part by Emry.
Although still only available at Magnavox dealers, national marketing for Odyssey began in late 1973. The company lowered the price to US\$50 if purchased with a television. The console was released that year with different games in 12 other countries: Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, the Soviet Union, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Venezuela. It was additionally released at some point in other countries, such as Mexico, where it was named the Magnavox Odisea, and clone versions were released by other manufacturers such as the Overkal in Spain, which may be the first console produced in Europe. In late 1973, Magnavox ran a large advertising campaign for its 1974 products, including sponsoring Frank Sinatra's November television special Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back. Commercials during the special and advertisements for it showed the Odyssey and other Magnavox products. Continuing demand led Magnavox to manufacture an additional 27,000 units for the 1973 holiday season, selling 20,000 of them according to Baer. In 1974, Odyssey appeared in the Sears Wish Book. Magnavox sold 89,000 consoles in total in 1973, 129,000 Odyssey units in 1974, and 80,000 units in 1975. According to Baer the company sold 350,000 Odysseys in total worldwide, though Fritsche stated it reached 367,000. The light gun peripheral sold 20,000 units.
## Legacy
Although there was continued customer demand for the console, Magnavox discontinued production of the Odyssey in the fall of 1975. Rising inflation had raised the manufacturing cost of the system to Magnavox from roughly US\$37 to US\$47, and Magnavox was unable to raise the retail price to match. Instead, it sought a cheaper alternative; in May 1974 it signed a contract with Texas Instruments for integrated circuits to replace the transistors and diodes of the original system, and designed a limited version of the console around them. The result was the first of several dedicated consoles—consoles that could only play games built into the system—in the Magnavox Odyssey series, the Magnavox Odyssey 100 and Magnavox Odyssey 200, as part of the first generation of video game consoles; the Odyssey 100 was only capable of playing the ping-pong and hockey games from the original Odyssey, while the 200 also had the handball game and a rudimentary on-screen scoring system. The 100 and 200 were released in November 1975 to replace the Odyssey for US\$69.95 and US\$109.95, respectively. Eleven dedicated Odyssey consoles were produced before a follow-up non-dedicated console in 1978, the Magnavox Odyssey 2.
While it showed the potential of video game consoles and was an early part of the rise of the commercial video game industry, the Odyssey is not generally considered a major commercial success. Magnavox produced no more games for the console after 1973 and rejected proposals for different versions of the console or accessories. While a few clone systems were produced in limited quantities, and multiple dedicated systems—generally focused on ping-pong game variants—were created by several companies, no other home video consoles capable of playing separately-produced games were released until the 1976 Fairchild Semiconductor Channel F.
Due to his work on the Odyssey, Baer has been referred to as the "Father of Video Games". In 2004, Baer was awarded the National Medal of Technology for "his groundbreaking and pioneering creation, development and commercialization of interactive video games, which spawned related uses, applications, and mega-industries in both the entertainment and education realms". The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) added the Magnavox Odyssey to its permanent collection of video games in 2013. MoMA's Paul Galloway described the console as "a masterpiece of engineering and industrial design" and stated that it was "hard to overstate the importance of [Ralph Baer's] place in the birth of the industry". The Brown Box prototype and the TV Game \#1 prototype are located in Washington, D.C. at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.
### Lawsuits
In May 1972, Nutting Associates chief engineer Nolan Bushnell, designer of the first commercial arcade video game, Computer Space, saw a demonstration of the Odyssey. Inspired, when he and Ted Dabney quit Nutting to found Atari, he assigned Allan Alcorn to create a cheap ping-pong arcade game as a training exercise, though he did not tell Alcorn that it was for training nor that the idea was based on the Odyssey Table Tennis game. Alcorn soon developed Pong (1972), which Bushnell recognized as a potential hit, and it became the company's first game. Pong was very successful, and in turn helped drive sales of the Odyssey; Baer noted that customers bought the console because of Table Tennis, in turn because of Pong, and joked that they may as well have stopped designing games after that game card. In April 1974, however, Magnavox sued Atari along with several competitors, including Allied Leisure, Bally Midway, and arcade distributor Empire, for infringing on its patents for video games played on a television screen. Two more lawsuits joined it by 1975, against Sears, Nutting, Williams Electronics, and others. Baer later stated that the lawsuits were not filed right away because Magnavox and Sanders needed to wait until they could expect to be awarded more money than it would cost to pursue the suits. The root of the conflict was a set of patents by Baer and the development team—particularly a pair which described how the Odyssey showed player-controlled objects, or dots, on a video monitor and described a number of games that could be played with the system, with one patent by Baer and one by Rusch.
The judge, John Grady, ruled in early 1977 that Baer's patent for the Odyssey constituted "the pioneering patent of the video game art", held the defendants' games as infringing, and set a precedent that any video game where a machine-controlled visual element hit and bounced off a player-controlled element violated Rusch's patent. At the time of judgement, only Seeburg Corporation and Chicago Dynamic Industries—though bankrupt—remained out of the defendants of the initial three lawsuits, with all other companies having settled out of court. Atari's settlement, made in June 1976, granted it a license in exchange for US\$1.5 million and access granted to Magnavox to all technology produced by Atari from June 1976 to June 1977; other defendants paid higher penalties. Over the next twenty years, Sanders and Magnavox sued several other companies over the issue, focusing on "paddle-and-ball" type games like Pong and Table Tennis that more clearly violated the patent; the final lawsuits ended in the mid-1990s. Defendants included Coleco, Mattel, Seeburg, and Activision; Sanders and Magnavox won or settled every lawsuit. Many of the defendants unsuccessfully attempted to claim that the patents only applied to the specific hardware implementations that Baer had used, or that they were invalidated by prior computer or electronic games. In 1985, Nintendo sued and tried to invalidate the patents, claiming as prior art the 1958 Tennis for Two game built by William Higinbotham. The court, however, ruled that the oscilloscope-based game did not use video signals and therefore did not qualify as a video game, and ruled again in favor of Magnavox and Sanders. Magnavox won more than US\$100 million in the various lawsuits and settlements involving the Odyssey related patents before they expired in the early 1990s.
## Games
A total of 28 games distributed on 11 different game cards were released for the Magnavox Odyssey. 13 games were Included with console—a set of 12 in America and a different set of 10 in other countries—with six others available for purchase either individually or in a bundle; the additional games primarily used the same game cards with different screen overlays and instructions. Another game, Percepts, was available for free to players that sent in a survey card. A light gun accessory, Shooting Gallery, was available for purchase, and included four games on two cards that used the rifle. A final four games were released for sale in 1973. The console does not enforce game rules or keep track of scores for the games; that is left up to the players.
|
18,246,876 |
Princess Maria Amélia of Brazil
| 1,173,249,135 |
Princess of the Empire of Brazil
|
[
"1831 births",
"1853 deaths",
"19th-century deaths from tuberculosis",
"Brazilian people of French descent",
"Brazilian people of German descent",
"Brazilian people of Portuguese descent",
"Brazilian princesses",
"Dames of the Order of Saint Isabel",
"Daughters of emperors",
"Daughters of kings",
"House of Braganza",
"Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Immaculate Conception of Vila Viçosa",
"Nobility from Paris",
"Royal reburials",
"Tuberculosis deaths in Portugal"
] |
Dona Maria Amélia (1 December 1831 – 4 February 1853) was a princess of the Empire of Brazil and a member of the Brazilian branch of the House of Braganza. Her parents were Emperor Dom Pedro I, the first ruler of Brazil, and Amélie of Leuchtenberg. The only child of her father's second marriage, Maria Amélia was born in France after Pedro I abdicated the Brazilian throne in favor of his son Dom Pedro II. Before Maria Amélia was a month old, Pedro I went to Portugal to restore the crown of the eldest daughter of his first marriage, Dona Maria II. He fought a successful war against his brother Miguel I, who had usurped Maria II's throne.
Only a few months after his victory, Pedro I died from tuberculosis. Maria Amélia's mother took her to Portugal, where she remained for most of her life without ever visiting Brazil. The Brazilian government refused to recognize Maria Amélia as a member of Brazil's Imperial House because she was foreign-born, but when her elder half-brother Pedro II was declared of age in 1840, he successfully intervened on her behalf.
Maria Amélia became engaged to Archduke Maximilian of Austria in early 1852, but before the marriage could take place she contracted tuberculosis, and was taken to the town of Funchal on the Portuguese island of Madeira. Despite its reputedly healthy climate, her health continued to deteriorate, and she died on 4 February 1853. Her body was taken to mainland Portugal and interred in the Pantheon of the House of Braganza; almost 130 years later, her remains were taken to Brazil. In honor of her daughter, Maria Amélia's mother financed the construction of the "Princesa D. Maria Amélia" hospital in Funchal. Maria Amélia's fiancé, Maximilian, made a pilgrimage to Brazil and Madeira, a journey that influenced his acceptance of the throne of Mexico in 1864.
## Early life
### Birth
Maria Amélia was born on 1 December 1831 in Paris and christened Maria Amélia Augusta Eugênia Josefina Luísa Teodolinda Elói Francisco Xavier de Paula Gabriela Rafaela Gonzaga. She was the only daughter of Dom Pedro, the Duke of Braganza, and his second wife Amélie of Leuchtenberg. Through her father, Maria Amélia was a member of the Brazilian branch of the House of Braganza (Portuguese: Bragança), and was referred to by the honorific Dona (Lady) from birth. She was the granddaughter of the Portuguese King João VI. Maria Amélia's mother was the daughter of Eugène de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg and the stepson of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France. Eugène was married to Princess Augusta, eldest daughter of King Maximilian I of Bavaria.
Pedro had formerly been the first Emperor of Brazil, as Pedro I, and also King of Portugal, as Pedro IV. He was succeeded on the Portuguese throne by his eldest daughter, Maria II, Maria Amélia's elder half-sister. The young Queen was the child of Pedro's first marriage to Archduchess Maria Leopoldina of Austria. In 1828, Maria II's crown was usurped by Dom Miguel I, Pedro's younger brother. Eager to restore his daughter to her throne, Pedro abdicated the Brazilian crown in April 1831 and departed for Europe with Amélie, who was pregnant with Maria Amélia.
To acknowledge Maria Amélia's rights as a Brazilian princess, Pedro invited several guests to observe her birth, including the Brazilian diplomatic envoy to France. The newborn's godparents were the French King Louis Philippe I and his consort Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily, after whom she was named. Pedro sent a letter to his children who had remained in Brazil—including his son, child-emperor Dom Pedro II—with the message: "Divine Providence wanted to lessen the sorrow that my paternal heart feels in the separation from Y.I.M. [Your Imperial Majesty], giving me one more Daughter, and to Y.I.M., one more sister and subject".
### Brazilian princess
When Maria Amélia was only 20 days old, her father departed France to invade Portugal. For almost two years, she lived in Paris with her mother and half-sister Maria II. When news arrived that the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, had fallen to Pedro's forces, Amélie of Leuchtenberg left Paris with her infant daughter and stepdaughter for Portugal. They arrived in Lisbon on 22 September 1833 and disembarked the next day. Charles John Napier, a British naval officer who had fought alongside Pedro, wrote about the emotional reunion:
> I never saw [Pedro] so happy and pleased; he went onboard just a little above Belém; he was received at the ladder by the empress [Amélie] who hugged and kissed him with the greatest affection: the queen [Maria II] was very moved and could not hold her tears. The little Princess [Maria] Amélia, his youngest daughter, took much of his attention: she became somewhat scared of seeing his bushy beard and did not warm to his caresses.
With Miguel I defeated and in exile, and Maria II restored to the throne, Maria Amélia and her family remained in Portugal, first residing in Ramalhão Palace, and later in the Royal Palace of Queluz near Lisbon. But the war had taken its toll on Pedro's health, and he was dying of tuberculosis. Maria Amélia, who was not yet three years old, was taken during the early hours of 24 September 1834 to Pedro's deathbed. Very weak, Pedro raised his hands to bless her and said: "Always tell this child of the father who loved her so dearly ... not to forget me ... always to obey her mother ... those are my last wishes". Pedro died in the early afternoon of the same day.
The widowed Amélie never remarried, and spent her time overseeing her daughter's upbringing in Portugal, where they remained despite not being members of the Portuguese Royal Family, though closely related. Neither Amélie nor her daughter ever visited Brazil, but Amélie unsuccessfully petitioned the Brazilian government to recognize her daughter as a member of Brazil's Imperial Family, which would have entitled her to an income. Maria Amélia's half-brother Pedro II was a minor, and the government of Brazil was in the hands of a precarious regency. The government refused to acknowledge Maria Amélia as a Brazilian princess owing to her foreign birth, and forbade both her and her mother from setting foot in Brazil. The situation would only change after Pedro II was declared of age in 1840 and was in a position to insist that she be recognized as a member of his household. Aureliano Coutinho (later Viscount of Sepetiba), the Minister of Foreign Affairs, requested the Brazilian parliament to grant Maria Amélia recognition, which occurred on 5 July 1841.
### Education and engagement
With the purpose of refining her education, Maria Amélia moved with her mother in the middle 1840s to Munich, capital of Bavaria, where many of her relatives lived. A dedicated student, she was given classes that encompassed a broad array of subjects that included rhetoric, philosophy, history, geography, German literature, mathematics and physics. She learned to speak and write not only in Portuguese, but also in English, French and German. She became highly skilled in drawing, painting and playing the piano. An intelligent young woman with a fiery temper and shrewd mind, Maria Amélia was described by a teacher as having, "without knowing, an exceptional talent for dialectic, an ability that would make the fortune of a young law student."
The memory of her father apparently motivated Maria Amélia's dedication to her education. The late Duke of Braganza cast a large shadow in her life, and was always remembered by his daughter, who would often ask the people around her: "and my father, who looks at me from heaven, shall he be pleased with his daughter?" She was never quite able to cope with her father's death and it deeply touched her. Maria Amélia remarked after she saw a garden where Pedro planted a sycamore:
> A profound sadness invaded me when contemplating these trees, which had survived my father and probably shall survive all of us. It is an image of human fragility. Man is the most frail of all beings; he dies, while the objects which were seemingly created for his use, endure the centuries! ... But I am digressing in my melancholic reflections.
At the end of 1850 Maria Amélia and her mother returned to Portugal, and settled in the Janelas Verdes palace. In early 1852, her cousin the Austrian Archduke Maximilian, then serving in the Austrian navy and on a stopover in Portugal, paid a visit to her. Maximilian's mother was the younger half-sister of Maria Amélia's maternal grandmother, and both women were members of the House of Wittelsbach from Bavaria. He was also related to Maria Amélia's older half-siblings, as his father was the younger brother of Brazilian Empress Leopoldina. They had met previously at a family reunion in Munich in 1838, when they were only children. In this second meeting, however, they fell in love. Maximilian was enthralled by Maria Amélia, a kind young woman with blue eyes and blonde hair "of striking beauty as well as cultivated intelligence". They were betrothed, but the engagement was never made official as a result of her early death.
## Later years
### Death
In February 1852, Maria Amélia contracted scarlet fever. As the months passed, she did not recover and developed a persistent cough, the onset of tuberculosis. On 26 August, the princess departed from the Janelas Verdes palace, where she lived, and traveled to the island of Madeira. The island's climate had a salutary reputation, as Maria Amélia noted: "the fevers disappear, they say, as if by magic!"
Maria Amélia and her mother, who had accompanied her, disembarked on 31 August in Funchal, the capital of Madeira. The entire town greeted her joyfully, and a crowd followed the princess to her new home. She adored the island and told her mother: "If I one day recover my previous robust health, isn't that so mommy, we will stay a long time in this island. We will make long excursions in the mountains, we will find new paths, just as we did in Stein!" But her health worsened, and by the end of November, all hope was gone. By the beginning of 1853, the princess was bedridden, and she knew death was approaching: "My strength diminishes from day to day; I can feel it ... we are reaching the beginning of the end." A little after midnight in the early hours of 4 February, a priest administered the last rites. Maria Amélia tried to comfort her mother: "Do not cry ... let God's will be done; may He come to my aid in my last hour; may He console my poor mother!" She died later that morning at around 04:00.
The princess's body remained in a chapel next to the house where she died until it was taken back to the Portuguese mainland on 7 May 1853. On 12 May, the coffin was disembarked at Lisbon, and a grandiose funeral followed. Her remains were interred next to her father's in the Braganza Pantheon, located in the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora. Almost 130 years later, in 1982, Maria Amélia's remains were carried to Brazil and placed in the Convento de Santo Antônio (Convent of Saint Anthony) in Rio de Janeiro, where other Brazilian royals are interred.
### Legacy
Emperor Pedro II had never met his younger sister in person, but had developed a strong relationship with her through her letters. He wrote in his journal seven years after her death: "I heard the mass for my sister [Maria] Amélia with whom I was so close and feel so sorry for never having met." Amélie visited her daughter's tomb every 4 February until her own death, and financed the construction of a hospital in Funchal called "Princesa D. Maria Amélia" in her daughter's honor; the hospital is still in existence. Amélie bequeathed her properties in Bavaria to Archduke Maximilian, "whom [she] would [have felt] happy having as a son-in-law, had God conserved [her] beloved daughter Maria Amélia".
Archduke Maximilian was haunted by the memory of Maria Amélia, and after his marriage to Charlotte of Belgium he made a pilgrimage in 1859–60 to locations connected to his ex-fiancée. Upon reaching the island of Madeira, he wrote: "Here died, of tuberculosis, on 4 February 1853, the only daughter of the Empress of Brazil, an extraordinarily gifted creature. She left this flawed world, pure as an angel who returns to Heaven, her true native land."
Maximilian visited the hospital in Funchal that bore Maria Amélia's name, and until his death financed the maintenance of a double hospital room there. He also donated a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows in memory of Maria Amélia. Next he visited the house (called Quinta das Angústias, or Anguished Villa) where she died; he wrote: "for a long time I stood silent amidst thoughts of sorrow and longing under the shadow of a magnificent tree that enfolds and protects the house where the angel, so bitterly wept for, ceased to exist". In his memoirs, Maximilian also mentioned the island of Madeira, where "the life [was] extinguished that seemed destined to guarantee my own tranquil happiness".
Following his arrival in Brazil on 11 January 1860 Maximilian became fascinated by the country, the only concurrent monarchy in South America, and then under the rule of his deceased fiancée's elder brother. Inspired by the stability and prosperity he saw there, on 10 April 1864 he agreed to become emperor of the newly resuscitated Mexican Empire, believing he could achieve the same results in Mexico. But instead, after fighting between Mexican conservatives and liberals, Maximilian was executed on 19 June 1867, after being captured by Juaristas. In a last homage to Maria Amélia, as he was stripped of his belongings to face a firing squad, Maximilian asked that the small medallion of the Blessed Virgin Mary she had given to him, and which he wore around his neck, be sent to her mother. While Maria Amélia's life had little effect on events in either Brazil or Portugal, her death had significant, if indirect, repercussions on the history of Mexico.
## Titles and honors
### Titles and styles
- 1 December 1831 – 4 February 1853: Her Highness The Princess Dona Maria Amélia of Brazil
### Honors
Princess Maria Amélia was a recipient of the following Brazilian Orders:
- Grand Cross of the Order of Pedro I.
- Grand Cross of the Order of the Rose.
She was a recipient of the following foreign honors:
- Royal Order of Noble Ladies of Queen Maria Luisa.
- Grand Cross of the Portuguese Order of the Immaculate Conception of Vila Viçosa.
- Grand Cross of the Portuguese Order of Saint Isabel.
- Insignia of the Austrian Order of the Starry Cross.
- Insignia of the Bavarian Order of Saint Elizabeth.
## Ancestry
## Endnotes
|
6,153,561 |
To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World
| 1,158,398,570 |
1836 open letter written by William B. Travis
|
[
"1836 documents",
"1836 in the Republic of Texas",
"English-language works",
"Open letters",
"Texas Revolution",
"Works about military history of the United States"
] |
To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World, commonly referred to as the Victory or Death letter, is an open letter written on February 24, 1836, by William B. Travis, commander of the Texian forces at the Battle of the Alamo, to settlers in Mexican Texas. The letter is renowned as a "declaration of defiance" and a "masterpiece of American patriotism", and forms part of the history education of Texas schoolchildren.
On February 23, the Alamo Mission in San Antonio, Texas had been besieged by Mexican forces led by General Antonio López de Santa Anna. Fearing that his small group of men could not withstand an assault, Travis wrote this letter seeking reinforcements and supplies from supporters. The letter closes with Travis's vow of "Victory or Death!", an emotion which has been both praised and derided by historians.
The letter was initially entrusted to courier Albert Martin, who carried it to the town of Gonzales some seventy miles away. Martin added several postscripts to encourage men to reinforce the Alamo, and then handed the letter to Launcelot Smithers. Smithers added his own postscript and delivered the letter to its intended destination, San Felipe de Austin. Local publishers printed over 700 copies of the letter. It also appeared in the two main Texas newspapers and was eventually printed throughout the United States and Europe. Partially in response to the letter, men from throughout Texas and the United States began to gather in Gonzales. Between 32 and 90 of them reached the Alamo before it fell; the remainder formed the nucleus of the army which eventually defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto.
Following the end of the Texas Revolution, the original letter was delivered to Travis's family in Alabama, and in 1893, one of his descendants sold it to the State of Texas for \$85 (\$ today). For many decades it was displayed at the Texas State Library; the original letter was then placed in a dark space for conservation purposes, and the display is now an exact facsimile. It is decorated by a portrait of Travis.
## Background
The Mexican Constitution of 1824 liberalized the country's immigration policies, allowing foreigners to settle in border regions such as Mexican Texas. People flocked to the area; an 1834 census estimated the Texas population at 7,800 Mexicans and 30,000 English-speaking people primarily from the United States. Among the immigrants was William Barret Travis, an Alabama native who had variously worked as a teacher, a newspaper publisher, and a lawyer. An avid reader, Travis often devoured a novel in a single day. His taste ran primarily to romantic adventure and history, especially the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Benjamin Disraeli and the historical works of Herodotus. Historians have speculated that Travis's choice of reading material may have affected his behavior—Travis was known for his melodramatic ways.
In May 1831, Travis opened a law office in Anahuac, Texas. Almost immediately, he and his law partner, Patrick Jack, clashed with the local military commander, Juan Davis Bradburn. Their subsequent actions were instrumental in causing the May 1832 Anahuac Disturbances. According to historian William C. Davis, Bradburn "overreacted and made heroes of two local malcontents whose actions their own people otherwise had not been much inclined to sanction". Bradburn was forced to resign his post and flee Texas.
The Anahuac Disturbances coincided with a Mexican civil war. Texians aligned themselves with proponents of federalism advocating a stronger role for state governments, in opposition to a centralized government that set most policies at the national level. The federalists prevailed, and their favored general, Antonio López de Santa Anna, was elected president. In 1835, Santa Anna began consolidating power; in response federalists launched armed rebellion in several Mexican states. Travis, an ardent foe of centralism, led an attack on Anahuac in June 1835 and forced the Mexican garrison to surrender. Many Texas settlers thought Travis's action was imprudent, and he was forced to apologize. Although the Mexican government issued a warrant for his arrest, local authorities did not enforce it.
Texians became increasingly discontented with the government as Santa Anna positioned himself as a dictator. In October, the Texas Revolution began and delegates appointed a provisional government. Travis was commissioned lieutenant colonel in the new regular army and asked to raise a cavalry company. He participated in the siege of Béxar, where he proved to be "an impulsive, occasionally insubordinate, officer".
By the end of 1835, Texians had expelled all Mexican troops from Texas. Believing the war ended, many Texians resigned from the army and returned home. In January, the provisional government essentially collapsed; despite a lack of authority for any branch of government to interfere with other branches, the legislature impeached Governor Henry Smith, who in turn disbanded the legislature. No one in Texas was entirely sure who was in charge.
Even as Texian governmental authority declined, rumors flew that Santa Anna would personally lead an invasion of Texas to quell the rebellion. Despite this news, Texian army strength continued to dwindle. Texas settlers were divided on whether they were fighting for independence or a return to a federalist government in Mexico. The confusion caused many settlers to remain at home or to return home. Fewer than 100 Texian soldiers remained garrisoned at the Alamo Mission in San Antonio de Béxar (now San Antonio, Texas). Their commander, James C. Neill, feared that his small force would be unable to withstand an assault by the Mexican troops. In response to Neill's repeated requests for reinforcements, Governor Smith assigned Travis and 30 men to the Alamo; they arrived on February 3. Most of the Texians, including Travis, believed that any Mexican invasion was months away.
## Composition of the letter
Travis assumed command of the Alamo garrison on February 11, when Neill was granted a furlough. On February 23, Santa Anna arrived in Béxar at the head of approximately 1500 Mexican troops. The 150 Texian soldiers were unprepared for this development. As they rushed to the Alamo, Texians quickly herded cattle into the complex and scrounged for food in nearby houses. The Mexican army initiated a siege of the Alamo and raised a blood-red flag signaling no quarter. Travis responded with a blast from the Alamo's largest cannon.
The first night of the siege was largely quiet. The following afternoon, Mexican artillery began firing on the Alamo. Mexican Colonel Juan Almonte wrote in his diary that the bombardment dismounted two of the Alamo's guns, including the massive 18-pounder cannon. The Texians quickly returned both weapons to service. Shortly after, Travis wrote an open letter pleading for reinforcements from "the people of Texas & All Americans in the World".
> To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World:
>
> Fellow citizens & compatriots—I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna—I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch—The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—Victory or Death.
>
> William Barret Travis
>
> Lt. Col. comdt
>
> P.S. The Lord is on our side—When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn—We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels & got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.
>
> Travis
## Distribution
Travis entrusted the letter to courier Albert Martin, who rode through the night to cover the 70 miles (110 km) to the closest town, Gonzales, as quickly as possible. During his journey, Martin added two postscripts. The first relayed Martin's fear that the Mexican army had already attacked the Alamo and ended "Hurry on all the men you can in haste". The second postscript is more difficult to read, as the letter was later folded along one line of text. The paper has since partially frayed along the fold, obliterating several words. The gist of the message, however, is that the men at the Alamo were "determined to do or die", and Martin intended to gather reinforcements and return as quickly as possible.
In Gonzales, Martin turned the letter over to Launcelot Smithers. When the Mexican army arrived in Béxar, Smithers had immediately set out for Gonzales. Travis may have sent him as an official courier, or he may have journeyed there on his own to warn the townspeople. Smithers added his own message under Martin's, encouraging men to gather in Gonzales to go to the relief of the Texians at the Alamo.
Before departing Gonzales, Smithers gave a letter to Andrew Ponton, the alcalde (or mayor) of the town. This second letter may have actually been the reason Smithers traveled to Gonzales, or it might have been a paraphrased version of the letter Martin had delivered. The copy read:
> To All the Inhabitants of Texas:
>
> In a few words there is 2000 Mexican soldiers in Bexar, and 150 Americans in the Alamo. Sesma is at the head of them, and from best accounts that can be obtained, they intend to show no quarter. If every man cannot turn out to a man every man in the Alamo will be murdered.
>
> They have not more than 8 or 10 days provisions. They say they will defend it or die on the ground. Provisions, ammunition and Men, or suffer your men to be murdered in the Fort. If you do not turn out Texas is gone. I left Bexar on the 23rd at 4 P.M. By order of
> W.V. [sic] Travis
> L. Smithers
Ponton sent the Smithers copy of the letter to Colonel Henry Raguet, the commander of the Committee of Vigilance and Safety in Nacogdoches. Raguet kept the letter he received and sent a copy, with his additional comments, to Dr. John Sibley, the chairman of the Committee of Vigilance and Safety for Texas Affairs in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
Smithers rode hard and delivered Travis's letter to San Felipe de Austin in fewer than 40 hours. In a hurriedly organized meeting, town leaders passed a series of resolutions pledging assistance to the Alamo defenders. The results of the meeting were printed in a broadsheet alongside a reproduction of Travis's letter. After distributing all 200 copies of their initial print run, newspaper publishers Joseph Baker and Thomas Borden made at least four other reproductions of the letter, resulting in more than 500 additional copies. Their final printing included a message from Governor Henry Smith urging the colonists "to fly to the aid of your besieged countrymen and not permit them to be massacred by a mercenary foe. ... The call is upon ALL who are able to bear arms, to rally without one moment's delay, or in fifteen days the heart of Texas will be the seat of war." On March 2, the letter was printed in the Texas Republican. It appeared in the other major Texas newspaper, the Telegraph and Texas Register, three days later. The letter was eventually reprinted throughout the United States and much of Europe.
## Texan response
This letter was one of several that Travis sent during the siege of the Alamo. Each carried a similar message—the Mexican army had invaded Texas, the Alamo was surrounded, and the Texans needed more men and ammunition to wage a successful defense. No assistance was forthcoming from the Texas government. By this point infighting had rendered the provisional government completely ineffective, and delegates convened on March 1 at the Convention of 1836 to create a new government. Most of the delegates believed that Travis exaggerated the difficulties he faced.
Many Texas residents disagreed with the convention's perception. As the message spread across Texas, settlers left their homes and assembled in Gonzales, where Colonel James Fannin was due to arrive with the remaining Texan Army troops. On February 27 one group of reinforcements impatiently set out on their own; as a result 32 additional Texans entered the Alamo. Research by historian Thomas Ricks Lindley indicates that an additional 50 or 60 men reinforced the Alamo on March 4.
Almost all of the Texans were killed at the Battle of the Alamo when the Mexican army attacked on March 6; Travis was likely the first to die. Unaware that the Alamo had fallen, reinforcements continued to assemble; over 400 Texans were waiting in Gonzales when news of the Texan defeat reached the town on March 11. Earlier that day, General Sam Houston, newly reappointed commander of the Texan Army, had arrived in Gonzales. On hearing of the Alamo's fall, Houston took command of the assembled volunteers. The following month, this hastily organized army defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto, ending the Texas Revolution.
This letter may have influenced the election of David G. Burnet as interim president of the new Republic of Texas. After reading one of the broadsheet versions of the letter, Burnet rushed to join Travis at the Alamo. After stopping at Washington-on-the-Brazos to recruit reinforcements from the men assembled at the Convention of 1836, Burnet became so "inspired by their deliberations" that he remained as a visitor. The convention declared independence from Mexico on March 2, but delegates feared for the safety of the new country's officers. Speaking privately with many of the delegates, Burnet professed his willingness to serve as president of a new republic, even if that made him a target of Santa Anna. The most popular delegates were absent from the convention on other business for the war effort. In the absence of interest in the position from most of those remaining, Burnet was nominated for president and defeated the only other candidate, Samuel Carson, by a 29–23 margin.
## Preservation
After the Texas Revolution ended, the original draft of the letter was given to Travis's family in Alabama. Several prominent Texians are known to have visited Travis's estranged wife shortly after the hostilities ended, but historians are unsure which of these men might have delivered the letter. Travis's daughter Susan (aged five at the time of his death) passed the letter down to her descendants; it eventually reached her great-grandson, John G. Davidson. In February 1891, Davidson lent the letter to the Texas Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics, and History. Two years later, Davidson offered to sell the letter to the state of Texas for \$250 (\$ today). This represented half of the annual sum allocated for collecting historical manuscripts, and the state was hesitant to agree. After negotiations, Davidson agreed to accept \$85 (\$ today) for the letter, and on May 29 it officially passed into state ownership.
For many decades, the letter was publicly displayed, usually in a locked glass case with other manuscripts and artifacts from the Texas Revolution. At times, it was arranged alongside the Travis family Bible and a copy of Travis's will. In 1909, the letter was moved to the Texas State Library and has since left that building only twice; it was among 143 documents lent to the Committee on Historical Exhibits for the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936, and it returned briefly to the site of the exposition in 1986. The original letter is no longer on permanent display. In its place is, in the words of Michael Green, former reference archivist for the Texas State Library Archives Division, "an exacting, one-of-a-kind facsimile". Directly over its display case is a portrait of Travis.
Four copies of the original broadsides are known to survive. One was placed for auction in 2004, where it was predicted to reach a price of over \$250,000.
## Return to the Alamo
In October 2012, the Texas General Land Office announced plans to display the famous Travis Letter in the Alamo from February 23 to March 7, 2013. This marked the first time the iconic letter has returned to the Alamo since it was written by Travis. The display was free and open to the general public.
## Reception
Travis' letter is regarded as "the most famous document in Texas history", but its widespread distribution allowed an impact outside the relatively isolated settlements in Texas. Historians place the letter in a broader context, "as one of the masterpieces of American patriotism" or even "one of the greatest declarations of defiance in the English language". It is rare to see a book about the Alamo or the Texas Revolution which does not quote the letter, either in full or part. The letter also appears in full in most Texas history textbooks geared towards elementary and middle school children. The postscripts, however, have rarely been printed. Despite its asserted impact, minimal scholarship exists on the letter itself.
Almost from the moment of his arrival in Texas, Travis had attempted to influence the war agenda in Texas. As he realized the magnitude of the opposition he faced at the Alamo, the tone of Travis's writings shifted from perfunctory reports to the provisional government to more eloquent messages aimed at a wider audience. With limited time and opportunity to sway people to his way of thinking, Travis's success, and perhaps his very survival, would depend on his ability to "emotionally move the people". His previous work as a journalist likely gave him a good understanding of the type of language that would most resonate with his intended audience. Travis used this particular letter not only as a means to publicize his immediate need for reinforcements and supplies, but also to shape the debate within Texas by offering "a well-crafted provocation" that might incite others to take up arms. He chose "unambiguous and defiant" language, resulting in a "very powerful" message. The letter represented an unofficial declaration of independence for Texas. Its word usage evoked the American Revolution and Patrick Henry's famed cry of "Liberty or Death!"
Critics have derided the letter for its emotionalism, noting that it appears to show "a preoccupation with romance and chivalry" not uncommon to fans of Sir Walter Scott. In particular, they point to Travis's asserted determination to sacrifice his own life for a lost cause.
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21,001,681 |
First Test, 1948 Ashes series
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One of five tests in a 1948 cricket series between Australia and England
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[
"1948 Ashes series",
"1948 in English sport",
"June 1948 sports events in the United Kingdom",
"Test cricket matches",
"The Invincibles (cricket)"
] |
The First Test of the 1948 Ashes series was one of five Tests in the The Ashes cricket series between Australia and England. The match was played at Trent Bridge in Nottingham from 10 to 15 June with a rest day on 13 June 1948. Australia won the match by eight wickets to take a 1–0 series lead.
The Australians started the match as firm favourites, having won the previous series against England 3–0; in the lead-up to the 1948 series, they had won 10 of their 12 tour matches in England, mostly by large margins. This included a crushing innings defeat in a match over the Marylebone Cricket Club—a team consisting almost entirely of Test-capped and current England players. England captain Norman Yardley won the toss and elected to bat on a cloudy day. After the first morning was interrupted by inclement weather, the Australian fast bowlers quickly made inroads into the English batting. Despite the loss of leading Australian paceman Ray Lindwall with a groin injury, the hosts had difficulty against his colleagues and fell to be 74 runs for the loss of eight wickets (74/8). However, a rearguard action by tail-enders Alec Bedser and Jim Laker saw England reach 165, Bill Johnston taking five wickets for 36 runs (5/36) for Australia, while compatriot Keith Miller took 3/38. Laker top-scored for the hosts with 63. The tourists then reached 17 without loss by stumps.
On the second day, Yardley attempted to slow the Australian batsmen by employing leg theory, a defensive strategy that sought more to contain the opposition than to attack. As England had batted poorly in the first innings, allowing Australia to take the lead quickly, the home team sought to slow the tourists' momentum and force a drawn match. Despite the tactics, Australia reached 293/4 at the end of the day's play, captain Donald Bradman having registered his 28th Test century. Although Bradman and his batsmen made gestures indicating frustration at England's stifling tactics, they remained patient as there was still much time left in the match for them to convert their dominance into a victory. The next morning, Bradman departed for 138, the first in a series of dismissals in the leg trap, but his vice-captain Lindsay Hassett continued, making 137 and putting on a century partnership with Lindwall as Australia were eventually out for 509, giving them a 344-run first innings lead. Laker was the leading bowler, taking 4/138. England reached 121/2 by stumps on the third day, which ended with a hostile crowd reaction to Miller, who bowled a large amount of bouncers at Len Hutton and Denis Compton.
After the rest day, play resumed in poor visibility, with frequent interruptions due to rain and bad light. England's batsmen progressed steadily as Australia struggled in Lindwall's absence, which forced his fellow bowlers to bear a greater workload. Hutton made 74 and Compton batted through the entire day to be unbeaten on 154, with England one run ahead at the close of play, on 345/6. Compton's innings in the difficult conditions was highly praised and his team still had a chance of hanging on for a draw if the lower order could bat for a large part of the final day. The next day, Australia prised out the remaining wickets and England were dismissed for 441, with Compton out for 184 after falling on his stumps. Miller and Johnston had both taken four wickets. Australia then made the 98 runs required for victory with the loss of two wickets; opener Sid Barnes made his second half-century for the match in the pursuit.
## Background
Prior to the First Test, Australia had played 12 first-class matches since arriving in England and starting their campaign in late-April, winning ten and drawing two. Eight of the victories were by an innings, and another was by eight wickets. One of the drawn matches, against Lancashire, was rain-affected, with the first day washed out entirely.
One of the tour matches was against the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which fielded a team composed almost entirely of Test players. In what was effectively a dress rehearsal for the Tests, Australia fielded their full-strength team and won by an innings. The difference in Australia's team for the First Test was the omission of leg spinner Colin McCool, who had been struggling from a torn callus on his spinning finger, which prevented him from bowling long spells. It was thought that Bradman would play another leg spinner—Doug Ring—in McCool's place, but the Australian captain changed his mind on the first morning when rain was forecast. Bill Johnston was played in the hope of exploiting a wet wicket. In previous rain-affected matches on the tour, Johnston had been highly effective, taking match figures of 10/40 and 11/117 against Yorkshire and Hampshire respectively. Bill Brown, the reserve opener, played out of position in the middle-order, as he had against Worcestershire and the MCC. Aside from Brown and Johnston's inclusion, Australia's team was the same as that which started the previous Ashes series in 1946–47, which they won 3–0.
England lost their leg spinner Doug Wright before the match to lumbago, so the off spin of Jim Laker was brought in at late notice. Laker had struggled when he had played for Surrey and the MCC against Australia in the lead-up matches, taking 1/137 and 3/127 respectively. In the MCC match, the Australians had attacked him, taking nine sixes from his bowling in one 82-minute passage of play. Of the team that took to the field for the MCC, Len Hutton, Bill Edrich, Denis Compton, captain Norman Yardley, Laker and Jack Young were also selected for the First Test. Hutton scored 52 and 64 in the MCC match but nobody else managed to pass 26 in either innings. Young had bowled 55.2 overs in Australia's only innings, taking 4/155. Opener Jack Robertson was left out after scoring six and a duck, and Cyril Washbrook, who had played against Australia in the 1946–47 series, partnered Hutton. Joe Hardstaff junior had scored 107 for Nottinghamshire, the only century made against Australia in the lead-up matches, earning himself Test selection. Paceman Alec Bedser did not play in the MCC match, but had been a regular during England's last series against Australia in 1946–47, and had taken 4/104 for Surrey in their match against the tourists. Godfrey Evans, who kept wickets in the previous Ashes series, also gained Test selection. According to former England bowler Bill Bowes, England went into the match with the intention of securing a draw through the selection of defensive bowlers. The home team's bowlers would tie down the Australians, forcing the batsmen to take risks to score runs and thereby increasing the chances of dismissal; however, if rain produced a sticky wicket, the England attack might be able to dismiss Australia relatively easily. As such, England filled their team with batsmen and only played three frontline bowlers, Laker, Bedser and Young, and relied on Yardley, Edrich and Charlie Barnett to support them with their occasion seam bowling. It was speculated that England would use only two specialist bowlers; the all-rounder George Pope was in the squad and it was thought he would be used in place of one of the bowlers, but in the end, he was omitted, as was Reg Simpson. The latter had made 74 and 70 for Nottinghamshire against Australia and had impressed observers with his display, and was made twelfth man.
Before the start of the match, much of the attention was placed on the weather forecast and the prospects of rain. In their 12 tour matches leading up to the Tests, Australia had been almost completely untroubled by the opposition except in the two matches against Yorkshire and Hampshire on rain-affected pitches. In these two matches they came close to defeat after heavy batting collapses before recovering to victory. It was thus thought that the toss could be of great importance, especially if the team batting first had accumulated a substantial total by the time rain came. The match was the first Ashes Test to be played on English soil since the end of World War II.
## Scorecard
### England innings
### Australia innings
## 10 June: Day One
England captain Norman Yardley won the toss and elected to bat despite the dull light; Trent Bridge had reputation for being favourable to batsmen, and in the previous Test between Australia and England at the ground in 1938, four Englishmen scored centuries as the hosts made 658, before Stan McCabe of Australia made 232 runs himself. The first innings set the pattern of the series as the English top order struggled against Australia's pace attack. Only twenty minutes of play was possible before lunch on the first day due to inclement weather, and the opening pair of Washbrook and Hutton had to deal with the contrasting bowling actions of Lindwall—with a low, somewhat round-arm action—and Miller, who extracted more bounce from a higher arm at the point of delivery. In the first two overs, the Australian pairing extracted little bounce and it seemed as though the hosts would be in a strong position to make a large score on a placid track if they made a solid start. Lindwall bowled the first ball of the match at a moderate pace, and Hutton pushed it square of the wicket on the off side for a single to start proceedings. Gradually, the Australian bowlers got into their rhythm and began to raise their pace. Miller induced an edge from Washbrook in his first over, but it bounced before reaching a fielder. In his second over, Miller bowled Hutton for three with a faster ball that skidded off the pitch to leave England at 9/1. The ball went between bat and pads as Hutton moved forward onto his front foot. The journalist and former Australian Test leg spinner Bill O'Reilly criticised Hutton for not moving his leg across to the pitch of the ball, thereby leaving a gap between bat and pad.
During the lunch interval, heavy rain fell, before the sun began to dry the pitch, making the ball skid through upon England's resumption at 13/1. Miller beat Washbrook's bat twice in one over soon after the resumption, but was unable to extract an edge. Lindwall reached his peak speed and Edrich edged to first slip, where Ian Johnson got both hands to the ball above his head, but failed to hold on. Edrich was on four at the time and this was part of a 20-minute passage of play during which England was unable to score. The next ball from Lindwall, Washbrook was caught on the run by Brown on the fine leg boundary after attempting to hook a bouncer pitched on the line of leg stump. It was to be the first of several times that Washbrook was dismissed while hooking, attracting substantial criticism. Washbrook's fall left England at 15/2 after 41 minutes of batting and brought Compton to the crease to join Edrich. Compton square drove Miller to the boundary for four, which prompted a retaliatory bouncer and a negative crowd reaction. Edrich was not scoring quickly but he defied the bowling of Miller and Lindwall as the English pair took the score to 46. Likewise, Compton was restraining his natural inclination to attack in an attempt to rebuild the innings after the two early wickets. During this period Brown made a series of one-handed run-saving stops in the field. The rain had also softened up the pitch and as a result, the playing surface did not offer much bounce.
Bradman then made a double change and brought on the two left-arm pacemen, Bill Johnston and Ernie Toshack. In his first over, Johnston bowled Edrich with a delivery that knocked the off stump out of the ground as the batsman leaned forward on the front foot. Two balls later, Johnston removed Hardstaff for a duck, caught by Miller in slips after attempting a cut. Wisden described the catch as "dazzling". Miller dived and balanced himself on his spine as he caught the ball heels over head. O'Reilly said: "Johnston had trimmed and embroidered the efforts of his opening bowlers and had swung the fortunes of the game completely in Australia's favour".
Bradman then decided to bring Miller back in place of Toshack. Two runs later, Compton was bowled attempting a leg sweep against Miller, his leg stump knocked out of the ground as he moved across his wickets. Five English wickets had fallen with only 48 runs on the board after 100 minutes of play; three batsmen had been dismissed in just ten minutes. O'Reilly said "There was nothing whatsoever to suggest that the pitch had been instrumental in the English debacle. It was purely and simply an exhilarating display of splendid bowling fit to be classed with any match-winning bowling performance in the story of Test cricket."
The collapse left Barnett and captain Yardley as the new men at the crease. Both players attacked the bowling but could not get their shots through the field for runs. Soon after, Lindwall was forced to leave the field due to a groin injury and did not bowl again. Barnett hit one four before Johnston bowled him for eight off the inside edge as he leaned onto the front foot. This brought Evans to the crease with the score at 60/6, and he attempted to disrupt the Australians' line and length by counter-attacking with a series of shots in front of the wicket. He drove the ball forward of point to the boundary for four, and was then given two lives. He hit Johnston hard to cover, but the catch went through Bradman for another boundary. The second chance of a catch went through Bradman's hand and struck the Australian captain in the abdomen. However, the missed opportunities cost the tourists little; Evans hit a ball strongly but it was caught at close range at short leg by Morris. Without further addition to the score, Toshack trapped Yardley, who had lingered at the crease for 26 minutes in accumulating three runs, leg before wicket (lbw) with a ball that straightened after pitching, leaving the score at 74/8.
England was facing the prospect of setting a new record for the lowest Test innings score at Trent Bridge, worse than the 112 made by England against Warwick Armstrong's Australians in 1921. However, a late fightback averted the unwanted record. Laker and Bedser, both from Surrey, joined forces and scored more than half of England's total, adding 89 runs in only 73 minutes. Laker's innings was highlighted by hooking and driving, while Bedser defended stoutly and drove in front of the wicket, much to the delight of the Nottingham crowd, who had appeared to have become depressed by the collapse of England's batsmen. At first, Bradman did not appear concerned by the partnership between the two bowlers from Surrey—it was thought the Australian captain may have been happy for England to continue batting so his top order would not have to bat in fading light towards the end of the afternoon, but he became anxious as the total continued to mount and both Bedser and Laker appeared comfortable. O'Reilly speculated that both players had batted confidently as their home ground in Surrey—The Oval—had a reputation for being batsman-friendly, and that as they would have had to contend with opposition batsmen who had the benefit of consistently favourable conditions, then they should also prepare so they too could capitalise on their opportunities with the willow. According to English commentator John Arlott, the playing surface was easier for batting than it had been at the start of the day, "but the difference was not such as to cause hesitation in the best batsmen in England".
Eventually, Australia was forced to take the second new ball, and Bedser was finally removed by Johnston and Miller had Laker caught behind two runs later, ending England's innings at 165. Laker top-scored with 63 in 101 minutes, with six boundaries, having reached his first 50 in only 60 minutes. O'Reilly said "There was nothing about his batting to suggest that luck was going his way or that he was short of batting experience." Johnston ended with 5/36, a display characterised with his accuracy and variations in pace and swing. Miller took 3/38 and a catch, while Lindwall and Toshack took one wicket each. Spin was not used in abundance, as Johnson bowled five overs and Morris three. Following England's struggles in the first innings, many pundits criticised Yardley's decision to bat first.
Australia had less than 15 minutes of batting before the scheduled close of play. Barnes made an appeal against the light after the first ball of the innings, which was a wide by Edrich. Barnes walked down the pitch and reportedly muttered to umpire Frank Chester in a casual tone "Eh, the light!", which allegedly shocked the arbiter. During the previous Ashes series in Australia, Barnes had continuously made time-wasting appeals against the light, which forced cricket administrators to limit the batting team to one appeal; if this was declined it would be up to the umpires to offer an adjournment. Despite the appeal against the light, the Australians showed little desire to be watchful against Edrich's bowling, scoring 11 runs from his two overs. Morris and Barnes successfully negotiated the new ball bowling of Edrich and Bedser. They reached stumps at 17 without loss, with Morris on 10 and Barnes on six. Barnes had been fortunate, edging both Edrich and Bedser through the slip cordon, and Yardley's decision to place his bowlers Young and Bedser in that region raised surprise; bowlers tend to lack the agility and reflexes needed for such positions. At this stage, following their tail-end resistance, England were in a good position with runs on the board if rain struck overnight and caused a sticky wicket, forcing the Australians to bat in hostile conditions the following day.
## 11 June: Day Two
Ideal batting conditions and clear weather greeted the players on the second day. After only four overs had been bowled in total the previous afternoon, Edrich was relieved of the new ball, which was given to Barnett, who accompanied Bedser. Both bowlers swung the ball into the right-handed Barnes and away from the left-handed Morris. Not a frontline bowler, Barnett focused on bowling defensively at medium pace, and the Australians wanted to make a safe start, so they decided to play him watchfully. This prompted some commentators to claim Barnett had allowed the Australians to settle into their rhythm by not trying to pressure them.
Barnes batted assuredly, while Morris was hesitant and shuffled around the crease. At one stage, Morris scored only seven runs in 55 minutes. Barnes was involved in some interplay with umpire Chester when the umpire failed to evade a drive from Morris and stopped it with his foot. Barnes picked the ball off the ground and handed it to the bowler, prompting a finger-wagging from Chester, to which Barnes responded by admonishing the umpire for blocking the ball. Morris unnecessarily played at a ball outside off stump from Bedser and edged it to wicket-keeper Evans, who dropped the catch. The batsman recomposed himself and hit Young's first ball—a full toss—for runs as Australia passed 50 without loss. After the wayward start, Young began to bowl with consistent accuracy.
Barnes and Morris took the score to 73 before the latter was bowled for 31 by Laker after two hours of batting. Morris tried to force a ball from Laker away, but hit it from the middle of his bat into his back pad, and the ball rebounded onto the stumps. Bradman came in and Yardley set a defensive field, employing leg theory to slow the scoring. The English leader packed the leg side with fielders, including two short legs, and ordered Bedser to bowl at leg stump. Bradman almost inside-edged the second ball onto his stumps, before defending uneasily for a period. With Laker stopping the scoring at the other end, Bradman managed only four runs in his first 20 minutes of batting. The Australian captain regarded Bedser as the finest seam bowler he faced in his career, and he batted in a circumspect manner as he sought to establish himself. At the other end, Bradman misjudged a ball from Laker and an incorrectly executed cut shot narrowly went wide of the slip fielder. Now aged 40, Bradman's reflexes had slowed and he no longer started his innings as confidently as he had done in the past. Barnes then reached his half-century after 135 minutes, pulling Barnett for four, and the Australians passed 100 before lunch after 125 minutes of batting. At the adjournment, the tourists were 104/1.
The score had progressed to 121 when Barnes tried to cut Laker, but only edged it onto the thigh of wicket-keeper Evans. The ball bounced away and the gloveman turned around and took a one-handed diving catch to dismiss Barnes for 62. Umpire Cooke was unsure of whether Barnes had hit the ball into the ground before Evans took the catch, and consulted with Chester, who had been standing at point on the other side of the field, before ruling the batsman out. Miller came in and was dismissed for a duck in Laker's next over without further addition to Australia's total. He failed to pick Laker's arm ball, which drifted away and went straight on instead of turning inwards, thereby clipping the outside edge of his bat. The ball flew to slip where Edrich completed the catch. The hard-hitting Miller had come in at No. 4, a position usually occupied by vice-captain Lindsay Hassett, a more sedate batsman, indicating that Bradman may have been looking to attack, but the change in batting order failed.
Laker to this point had taken 3/22 from 12.4 overs, having also top-scored in the first innings. All the while, Australia had been scoring slowly, as they would for most of the day. Brown came in at No. 5, but he had played most of his career as an opening batsman and looked unaccustomed to playing in the middle order, but Bradman brought him in ahead of Hassett as the new ball was due and Brown was used to starting his innings against pace bowlers and a new ball. The Australian captain decided to hasten the new ball by using his feet to get to the pitch of the ball to attack the spinners, hitting them through the off side. Yardley removed Laker—who was bowling effectively—from the attack and took the second new ball, bringing back Bedser and Edrich. However, this move backfired as Bradman struck his first boundary in over 80 minutes, and in the first 40 minutes after lunch, 43 runs were added. Yardley brought back his two spinners, and Australia passed England's total before the English captain brought himself on to bowl, trapping Brown—who was attempting to push the ball to mid-on—lbw with an off cutter in his first over. This ended a 64-run stand in 58 minutes and Hassett came in at 185/4. The Australian vice-captain came close to being caught when he knocked a ball from Bedser into the air, narrowly evading the grasp of Evans. Following the departure of Brown, the Australian scoring slowed as Bradman changed the team strategy to one of attempting to bat only once.
Yardley continued to employ a leg side field as he and Barnett bowled outside leg stump. During one over, Bradman did not attempt a single shot and then put his hands on his hips to express his displeasure at England's tactics. During the 15 minutes before tea, the Australian captain did not add a single run and was heckled by the crowd. Bradman reached tea on 78, and 55 minutes after the resumption of play, he cover drove Bedser to reach his century in 218 minutes. It was his 28th Test century, and his 18th in Ashes Tests. The last 29 runs took 70 minutes to accumulate, and it was one of Bradman's slower innings as Yardley focused on stopping runs rather than taking wickets. Nevertheless, Bradman had appeared comfortable after the early stages of his innings, and patiently scored most of his runs between mid-off and mid-on, often from the back foot. After Bradman had reached his milestone, many of the spectators began to leave the ground, content with what they had seen.
Bradman added a further 30 in the last hour to end with 130. Hassett also batted patiently, with one period of 20 minutes during which his score remained on 30. Australia batted to stumps on the second day without further loss, ending at 293/4, a lead of 128, with Hassett on 41. Young had bowled 32 overs to a leg side field, conceding only 53 runs. Fingleton described the afternoon day's play as a "very shrewd display of tactics" and said that although the proceedings and the progress of the Australian batsmen had been slow, they were "never ... dull". He added: "Bradman was on top by virtue of the facts that his side was well ahead of England, his own score was 130 and he was also unconquered." However, O'Reilly disagreed and said the Australians had not made enough progress as they should or could have. He said the batsmen failed to capitalise on the fatigue of the bowlers late in the day by not going on the attack in search of quick runs, instead of their "monotonously dull" strategy of patient attrition. O'Reilly claimed that in containing the opposition batsmen, the English attack had "shared the honours of the day with—if they did not actually steal them from—Bradman." Bradman and Hassett had made physical gestures indicating their displeasure at England's tactics, but O'Reilly felt Yardley had no choice after his team had squandered the initiative with their poor batting, and claimed it was up to the Australians to turn their advantage into a decisive, match-winning position. Arlott disagreed with O'Reilly, and said Australia "had time to build ... without risk or hurry on a gentle and accommodating ... wicket. Given a winning opportunity, it is characteristic of the Australians that they will never dissipate it by over-anxiety or by carelessness."
After the day's play, O'Reilly—a former teammate of Bradman who was covering the tour as a journalist—consulted Bedser on his use of leg theory. During his career O'Reilly had often attacked leg stump, and had devised a plan to ensnare Bradman.
## 12 June: Day Three
On the third morning, amid sunshine, Bradman resumed on 130, before progressing to 132 and becoming the first player to pass 1,000 runs for the English season. The Australian captain was not aware of the reason for the spontaneous crowd applause until being notified by wicket-keeper Evans.
Bedser was bowling and he soon implemented O'Reilly's plans. Hutton was moved from leg slip to a squarer position at short fine leg, around 11 metres from the bat. Two short legs and a mid-on were put in place. Bradman drove Bedser through cover for a boundary, but on the next ball, his innings terminated at 138 when he glanced an inswinger from Bedser straight to Hutton at short fine leg, who caught the ball without having to move. Bradman had batted for 290 minutes and faced 321 balls and as Johnson walked in to replace him with Australia at 305/5, Bedser waved to O'Reilly in the press box. When former Australian Test opener Jack Fingleton—a teammate of both Bradman and O'Reilly who was also working as a journalist—reported what his colleague had done, there was some debate as to whether O'Reilly's actions were treacherous.
Johnson made 21, including an edge over the slips cordon, before being bowled by Laker. He inside edged the ball onto his foot and it rolled back into his stumps. At the same time, Yardley pinned Hassett down with more leg theory. Laker bowled with one slip, while Young had none and had all of his fielders evenly spread in a circular formation. Tallon came in and took 39 minutes to compile 10 before hitting a return catch to the left-arm orthodox spin of Young. The scoring was very slow during this passage of play—Young delivered 11 consecutive maiden overs and his 26-over spell conceded only 14 runs. Hassett conducted himself in a humorous way, and Arlott said: "only his grace and concealed humour made his innings tolerable". He mainly scored from deflections and was for the most part prepared to take his time.
The injured Lindwall came out to bat at 365/7 without a runner to join Hassett, and appeared to be able to run twos and threes without significant difficulty. Hassett, who had scored only 30 runs in the first 75 minutes of the day, swept Laker for four and then hit him for the first six of the match. The Australian vice-captain added 53 in the two hours of the morning session to reach lunch at 94. The tourists were unhurried and remained patient as they had bowled England out quickly on the first day and there was still sufficient time to force a result with less than half the playing time elapsed.
After the break, Hassett reached his century after 305 minutes of batting, his first in Tests in England. He then accelerated, adding a further 37 runs in 49 minutes before being bowled by Bedser, having struck 20 fours and a six. The dismissal ended an eighth-wicket partnership of 107 with Lindwall, who was caught by Evans down the leg side four runs later, having scored 42 with seven fours. Australia's last-wicket pair of Johnston and Toshack wagged a further 33 runs in only 18 minutes, batting in a carefree and freewheeling manner, before Bedser trapped Toshack to end the innings at 509, leaving the tourists with a 344-run lead. Australia had batted for 216.2 overs, the longest innings in terms of overs and the highest total in the series. Yardley placed the majority of the bowling load on his spinners; Young (1/79) and Laker (4/138) delivered 60 and 55 overs respectively. Bedser bowled 44.2 overs, taking 3/113. The part-time seam bowlers, Edrich, Barnett and Yardley, bowled 18, 17 and 17 overs respectively. Australia had scored slowly but they had no need to take risks when there was so much time remaining. Yardley's leg theory tactics failed to coax them into losing their patience.
England thus started their second innings still 344 runs in arrears. Although Lindwall was able to run between the wickets, he did not take to the field in the second innings and the 12th man Neil Harvey took his place. Fingleton called Harvey "by far the most brilliant fieldsman of both sides". Yardley was sceptical as to whether Lindwall was sufficiently injured to be forced from the field, but did not formally object to Harvey's presence on the field. O'Reilly said Lindwall had demonstrated his mobility during his innings, was in no way "incapacitated" and that the English captain "must be condemned for carrying his concepts of sportsmanship too far" when no substitute was justified. O'Reilly decried the benefit Australia derived through the substitution, agreeing with Fingleton's judgement of Harvey was the tourists' best fielder by far. Arlott went further, calling Harvey the best fielder in the world.
Four of the first five runs were leg byes; Miller then removed Washbrook for one from a top-edged hook shot that was caught by Tallon. The batsman was displeased with the umpire's decision and gestured to a red mark on his shirt, indicating he felt the ball had touched his body and not the bat. Edrich came in and while he continued to struggle, he defiantly held up his end of the pitch. After scoring 13 from 43 minutes, Edrich was caught behind attempting a cut from the off spin of Johnson. He did not read the arm ball, which went straight on and took the outside edge, leaving England 39/2. Johnson was extracting a substantial amount of spin from the surface.
This brought together England's leading batsmen, Hutton and Compton. The latter, coming in upon the fall of Edrich, ran down the pitch before the ball was bowled and had to quickly play a defensive shot on the run. He clipped the next ball to the leg side for two runs before surviving a confident leg before wicket appeal from Johnson when he was on eight. Compton appeared ready to walk off, but umpire Chester declined the appeal, much to his surprise. England reached 50 in 65 minutes and with Lindwall missing, Bradman had difficulties in spreading the workload among his depleted bowling resources. The part-time leg spin of Barnes was brought on as the fifth bowling option to give the others some time to rest, and Miller resumed bowling late in the day, delivering slow off spin to conserve energy. Hutton and Compton exploited the depleted bowling attack and began to score freely, using their placement to bisect the gaps between the fielders. The pair did not give a chance apart from when Compton aimed an uppish square drive from Johnston that flew in the air wide of cover point.
Hutton then leg glanced Miller, before cover driving and square cutting him in another over. All three shots went for four and he reached his fifty in 110 minutes. Miller responded to the spate of boundaries with a series of bouncers, including five in the last over of the day. One of these struck Hutton high on his left arm. The batsmen survived, but Miller received a hostile reaction from the crowd throughout his short-pitched barrage, including shouts of "Bodyline". The original practitioners of Bodyline, Harold Larwood and Bill Voce, were both from Nottinghamshire and played at Trent Bridge, and were later excluded from selection for England after being blamed for the ill-feeling caused by Bodyline. The Nottinghamshire supporters were still angry with how their players had been removed and were not happy that Miller was able to do something they saw to be equivalent. For his part, Miller appeared to be amused by the crowd reaction and revelled in it, grinning and flicking his hair. However, Hutton had the last word, glancing Miller down to fine leg for a four from the final ball of the day. England were 121/2, with Hutton and Compton on 63 and 36 respectively. Miller was widely jeered and heckled as he walked off the field, and the crowded surged towards him as he walked up the steps into the dressing room. O'Reilly defended Miller's use of short-pitched deliveries, pointing out that he had not employed a packed leg side field and had allowed the batsman the opportunity to score from hook and pull shots if he was willing to try; in contrast the packed Bodyline field meant batsmen would find little reward for such shots and defensive play would only lead to dismissal.
## 14 June: Day Four
The third day was followed by a rest day on Sunday and play resumed on the fourth morning, a Monday, with England still 223 runs in arrears. Before the start of play, the Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club (NCCC) secretary, H. A. Brown, broadcast an appeal to the gallery over the public address system to refrain from their heckling of Miller.
> Let us keep Nottingham a place where Test matches can continue to be played. On Saturday the Australian, Miller, was booed and there was much subsequent publicity in the press. These Australians are great sportsmen. They stood by the Empire in the war and we should always be pleased to greet them. Let us show them how really pleased we are and give them a warmhearted greeting this morning.
The crowd responded by clapping as the Australians took to the field. The chairman of the NCCC reportedly apologised to Bradman in private for the crowd reaction to Miller.
As the new ball was due soon after the start of the play, Johnson and Toshack opened the attack as Bradman saved Johnston and Miller. In his first over, Johnson extracted sharp turn from one delivery that pitched outside off stump; not expecting much spin, Compton did not play a shot and was hit on the pads, but the umpire rejected the loud appeal for lbw. Otherwise, Hutton and Compton progressed steadily before the light deteriorated, although Johnson and Toshack were able to make the ball deviate regularly. Despite this, Bradman opted to have Miller take the new ball in the fifth over of the day as soon as it was available. Mindful of recent events, Miller refrained from bouncers during the morning. In the overcast conditions, Miller bowled a relatively full length and swung the ball; one of his deliveries beat Hutton and narrowly missed his stumps. At the other end, Johnston was also able to make the ball move sideways. Meanwhile, Compton appeared to be untroubled by the bowling. After half an hour of play, an unsuccessful appeal against the light was made as dark clouds hovered overhead. The rejection of the appeal made little difference, as a thunderstorm stopped proceedings for five minutes soon after. Shortly after the resumption, Miller bowled Hutton with an off cutter in the dark conditions, ending the 111-run partnership at 150/3. Hutton had made 74 runs in 168 minutes with 11 fours, and as in the first innings, he played forward to a ball without getting his front foot close to the bat, resulting in the delivery moving through the gap into the stumps. The wicket prompted the entrance of Hardstaff, and on the third ball he aimed a cut at a wide Miller delivery, and it again went low to second slip as in the first innings. However, this time Morris was in the position and the catch was dropped. It was part of an eventful over during which Hardstaff had many near-misses. He played and missed at one ball, inside edged another into his pads and edged another through the slips for two runs. Hardstaff had a reputation for being an uncertain starter, especially as he had a tendency to poke at deliveries outside his off stump, and the poor visibility further hindered him.
At 12:35, bad light stopped proceedings, and after two inspections the umpires resumed play, although Arlott claimed that visibility was "barely more than a half candle-power better". Hardstaff then batted aggressively, walking towards the bowling and hitting three cover drives for four from Miller and Johnston, in one period in which he outscored Compton 23 to four. He then edged through slips for another boundary before Compton swept Toshack to the fence. In the final over before the lunch break, Hardstaff square drove Johnston for four off the back foot and England adjourned at 191/3 with Compton on 63 and Hardstaff 31, still 153 in arrears. During the session, Bradman used Miller for 11 overs in a row in an attempt to pressure the Englishmen, while Toshack bowled defensively from the other end.
After lunch, the light was again poor, but England did not appeal to the umpires for an adjournment. Yardley wanted to bat now in poor visibility in order to eradicate the deficit and build a lead, so that if a shower came later and turned the pitch into a sticky wicket, Australia would have to chase a target on an erratic surface. Bradman anticipated rain, so he utilised Toshack and Johnson to bowl defensively to slow England's progress in the hope that the hosts would not have a lead by the time a sticky wicket materialised. As the umpires were obliged to not call off play unless the light was so poor as to endanger the batsman, the lack of pace of Johnson and Toshack forced play to continue as they posed no physical threat to the batsmen. In foggy and misty conditions, Hardstaff brought up England's 200 with a strongly-hit hook that almost hit Barnes. Compton then hit a boundary from Toshack, prompting Bradman to further stack the leg side with fielders in defensive positions. Scoring was slow as Toshack pinned down the batsmen with an effective leg stump line.
The innings was interrupted by bad light and upon the resumption of proceedings, poor visibility intervened for a second time with Compton on 97. After 55 minutes of delay, the umpires called the players back onto the field. Wisden said: "rarely can a Test Match have been played under such appalling conditions as on this day." Fingleton said the conditions were "pitiable" and lamented the "utmost gloom in which batsmen and fieldsmen had intense difficulty in sighting the ball". O'Reilly said it was "without doubt the worst light" under which he had seen a first-class match proceed. Compton brought up his third consecutive century at Trent Bridge by hitting a single to square leg, a "lovely century of stroke-play and patience" according to Fingleton. The innings had taken 227 minutes and included 12 fours, and Compton had regularly hit the ball in the middle of his bat despite the poor visibility, which meant the batsmen could not see the ball once it was close to the boundary. O'Reilly described the innings as "one of the greatest batting efforts in the story of Anglo-Australian Tests", adding that "his hundred runs was but a poor measure by which to estimate the value of his magnificent innings", deeming Compton's innings equivalent to a double century under normal conditions. Arlott said "In its manner, its style and its context it must rank with any innings he has ever played ... his innings will remain a Test classic."
Soon after, Compton edged to the slips from the bowling of Miller, but Johnson spilled the catch. Hardstaff fell for 43, lofting Toshack to Hassett on the leg side, having put on 93 with Compton. The ball looped up in the air and travelled half-way to the square leg boundary, but Hassett managed to keep track of its trajectory through the fog. Barnett came in and together with Compton added 21 runs in 33 minutes before edging Johnston to Miller, who completed a difficult catch in slips. Yardley came out to bat at 264/5 and Compton drove Miller square for four, provoking the bowler's first bouncer of the day. Compton hooked it away for two and Miller's next delivery slipped out of his hand and cleared Compton's head on the full to some jeering in the crowd. Such a ball is known as a beamer and is illegal because of the physical danger it poses to the batsman. Compton and Yardley put on a 57-run partnership in 66 minutes before Johnston held a return catch to dismiss Yardley for 22. England reached stumps at 345/6, just one run ahead of Australia, with Compton on 154 and Evans on 10. During the day, Johnston bowled the most overs, 30.
## 15 June: Day Five
Compton and Evans continued to resist the Australians on the final morning, the latter being the more aggressive, and proceedings were briefly interrupted by rain less than 30 minutes after the start of play. At the time, it appeared the downpour might cause the match to end in a draw. After half an hour of stoppages, play resumed and Evans attacked, hitting two fours in quick succession. England's wicket-keeper played Johnston and Johnson confidently, but Bradman nevertheless persisted in giving Compton easy singles in order to bring Evans on strike so he could be targeted. For his part, Compton thought his partner could be relied upon and accepted the runs gifted to him by the Australian captain, while Evans continued to attack the bowling. The batsmen appealed against the light after the first stoppage of the day, but were turned down. Australia took the new ball, but the home team's batsmen continued to proceed steadily, Evans being particularly aggressive. After a second interruption for poor light, this time for ten minutes, play resumed, and England had added a further 60 runs to their overnight total to reach 405/6.
Miller bowled a fast and very short bouncer at Compton, who moved into position to hook before changing his mind and attempting to evade the ball. He lost balance and threw his legs apart, trying to avoid stepping onto his stumps. However, he was unsuccessful and was out hit wicket for 184, having batted for 413 minutes and hit 19 fours. Wisden said: "No praise could be too high for the manner in which Compton carried the side's responsibilities and defied a first-class attack in such trying circumstances." Fingleton said it was "a most depressing end to an innings that will live always". O'Reilly described it as "an unsavoury ending to one of the greatest fighting knocks in Test history". Compton's fall at 405/7 exposed the English tail and Australia quickly finished off the rest of the batsmen in 36 minutes. Miller bowled Laker—who played outside the line of the ball—for four, Evans reached 50 and was caught behind from Johnston, who then castled Young for nine. England were all out for 441 after 183 overs, leaving Australia a target of 98 in three hours. Lindwall's absence throughout the England innings meant the remaining four Australian frontline bowlers had bowled more than 32 overs each—Johnston delivered 59 and ended with 4/147 while Miller took 4/125 from 44 overs. Toshack and Johnson took a wicket each from 33 and 42 overs respectively.
Australia progressed quickly at the start of the chase. Barnes took 13 runs, including three boundaries, from the opening over, bowled by Bedser, while Morris again lacked fluency. However, Barnes continued to score quickly, and 24 runs came from the first four overs. Yardley tried to stop the run-scoring by bringing on Young, but Morris hit him for four and the bowler was promptly taken off. The tourists proceeded steadily to 38 from 32 minutes before Bedser bowled Morris for nine; after bowling several balls that moved away, Bedser caught out Morris with an inswinger. Morris had developed a habit of trying to defend the ball to the leg side while shuffling towards the off, and was not in a position to deal with a ball that hurried off the pitch. Bradman came to the crease and batted for 12 minutes without getting off the mark. From the 10th ball he faced, the Australian skipper was out for a duck, again caught by Hutton at short fine leg in Bedser's leg trap. Bradman showed obvious displeasure at allowing himself to be dismissed by the same trap in consecutive innings, and his departure left Australia at 48/2. It was the first time in four tours to England that Bradman had made a duck in a Test.
Upon Bradman's dismissal, dark clouds began to close in on the ground, and rain appeared to be a possible saviour for England. However, it never came, and meanwhile Hassett joined Barnes. The pair attacked, Hassett twice driving Bedser over the infield for boundaries, and later pulling another ball in the air for another four. Barnes gave Young an opportunity for a return catch, but the ball was dropped. The pair reached the target without further loss after 87 minutes of batting. Barnes ended on 64 with 11 boundaries, having been prolific on the square cut. He tied the scores with a swept boundary, and having taken a stump as souvenir, ran off the ground believing the match was over. Barnes tossed his souvenir back into the playing arena and returned to the field after noticing the reaction of the amused crowd and Hassett promptly hit the winning run.
## Aftermath
The First Test was a continuation of the trend of English batsmen being largely unable to cope with Australia's pacemen. Hutton was the only Englishman to pass 50 in the MCC match, and at Trent Bridge only he and Compton managed this feat. Apart from Hardstaff, none of the remaining batsmen passed 25. Wisden's verdict was that England fought back very well, but that avoiding defeat was almost impossible after their poor batting on the first day. Bowes considered the defensive English bowling display worthy of a draw, and blamed the first innings batting for the failure to prevent defeat. However, he believed the English tactics to be justified and should have been continued.
Australia's success came at a cost, with Lindwall injured and unable to bowl in the lead-up to the Second Test, missing the intervening matches against Northamptonshire and Yorkshire. The heavy workload on Miller caused by Lindwall's breaking down mid-Test generated severe back pain, and he was still not fully recovered by the start of the Second Test at Lord's. Lindwall was subjected to a thorough fitness test on the first morning of the Lord's Test. Bradman was not convinced of Lindwall's fitness, but the bowler's protestations were sufficient to convince his captain to risk his inclusion. Australia won the toss and elected to bat, allowing Lindwall further time to recover from his injury. Miller also played, but still nursing his back, was unfit to bowl.
Content with their convincing win at Trent Bridge, Australia made no changes to their team, while England made three, omitting Barnett, Hardstaff and Young due to a combination of injury and poor form. Barnett and Hardstaff never played another Test. Despite his injury, Lindwall played a key role in a heavy 409-run Australian victory, taking eight wickets. His bowling also led to the controversial omission of Hutton, who performed poorly at Lord's, for the Third Test. The reason was said to be Hutton's struggles with Lindwall's short-pitched bowling. This decision pleased the Australians, who regarded Hutton as their most formidable opponent with the bat.
On the field, the Australians continued to flourish. The Third Test was a rain-affected draw, and between the First and Fourth Tests, they won four of their five county matches, drawing the other. On the final day of the Fourth Test, Australia's batsmen set a world Test cricket record by scoring 404 to win the match, thereby taking a series-winning 3–0 lead.
After the historic win in the Fourth Test, Australia had five tour matches before the final Test. They won three while two ended in rain-curtailed draws. Australia then completed the series with an innings victory in the Fifth Test at The Oval to complete a 4–0 result. The Fifth Test was the last international match of the tour, and the tourists had seven further matches to negotiate in order to fulfil Bradman's aim of going through the English season undefeated. Apart from two washed-out matches, Bradman's men had little difficulty, winning the remaining five fixtures by an innings. They thus became the first touring Test team to complete an English season undefeated, earning themselves the sobriquet The Invincibles.
## See also
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147,537 |
Adrian Boult
| 1,169,795,246 |
English conductor
|
[
"1889 births",
"1983 deaths",
"20th-century British conductors (music)",
"20th-century male musicians",
"Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford",
"BBC Symphony Orchestra",
"BBC music executives",
"British male conductors (music)",
"Conductors (music) awarded knighthoods",
"Decca Records artists",
"English Unitarians",
"English conductors (music)",
"English justices of the peace",
"Knights Bachelor",
"Members of Leander Club",
"Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour",
"Musicians from Chester",
"People educated at Westminster School, London",
"People from Crosby, Merseyside",
"Presidents of the Independent Society of Musicians",
"Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists",
"Unitarian Universalists",
"University of Music and Theatre Leipzig alumni"
] |
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult, CH (/boʊlt/; 8 April 1889 – 22 February 1983) was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family, he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was conductor of the City of Birmingham Orchestra in 1924. When the British Broadcasting Corporation appointed him director of music in 1930, he established the BBC Symphony Orchestra and became its chief conductor. The orchestra set standards of excellence that were rivalled in Britain only by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), founded two years later.
Forced to leave the BBC in 1950 on reaching retirement age, Boult took on the chief conductorship of the LPO. The orchestra had declined from its peak of the 1930s, but under his guidance its fortunes were revived. He retired as its chief conductor in 1957, and later accepted the post of president. Although in the latter part of his career he worked with other orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and his former orchestra, the BBC Symphony, it was the LPO with which he was primarily associated, conducting it in concerts and recordings until 1978, in what was widely called his "Indian summer".
Boult was known for his championing of British music. He gave the first performance of his friend Gustav Holst's The Planets, and introduced new works by, among others, Elgar, Bliss, Britten, Delius, Rootham, Tippett, Vaughan Williams and Walton. In his BBC years, he introduced works by foreign composers, including Bartók, Berg, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Webern. A modest man who disliked the limelight, Boult felt as comfortable in the recording studio as on the concert platform, making recordings throughout his career. From the mid-1960s until his retirement after his last sessions in 1978 he recorded extensively for EMI. As well as a series of recordings that have remained in the catalogue for three or four decades, Boult's legacy includes his influence on prominent conductors of later generations, including Sir Colin Davis and Vernon Handley.
## Biography
### Early life
Boult was born in Chester, Cheshire, the second child and only son of Cedric Randal Boult (1853–1950), and his wife, Katharine Florence (née Barman; d. 1927).
Cedric Boult was a Justice of the Peace and a successful businessman connected with Liverpool shipping and the oil trade; Cedric and his family had "a Liberal Unitarian outlook on public affairs" with a history of philanthropy.
When Boult was two years old the family moved to Blundellsands, where he was given a musical upbringing. From an early age he attended concerts in Liverpool, conducted mostly by Hans Richter. He was educated at Westminster School in London, where in his free time he attended concerts conducted by, among others, Sir Henry Wood, Claude Debussy, Arthur Nikisch, Fritz Steinbach, and Richard Strauss. His biographer, Michael Kennedy, writes, "Few schoolboys can have attended as many performances by great artists as Boult heard between 1901 and October 1908, when he went up to Christ Church, Oxford." While still a schoolboy, Boult met the composer Edward Elgar through Frank Schuster, a family friend.
At Christ Church college at Oxford, where he was an undergraduate from 1908 to 1912, Boult studied history but later switched to music, in which his mentor was the musical academic and conductor Hugh Allen. Among the musical friends he made at Oxford was Ralph Vaughan Williams, who became a lifelong friend.
In 1909, Boult presented a paper to an Oxford musical group, the Oriana Society, entitled Some Notes on Performance, in which he laid down three precepts for an ideal performance: observance of the composer's wishes, clarity through emphasis on balance and structure, and the effect of music made without apparent effort. These guiding principles lasted throughout his career. He was president of the University Musical Club for the year 1910, but his interests were not wholly confined to music: he was a keen rower, stroking his college boat at Henley, and all his life he remained a member of the Leander Club.
Boult graduated in 1912, with a basic "pass" degree. He continued his musical education at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1912–13. Musician Hans Sitt was in charge of the conducting class, but Boult's main influence was Nikisch. He later recalled, "I went to all his [Nikisch's] rehearsals and concerts in the Gewandhaus. ... He had an astonishing baton technique and great command of the orchestra: everything was indicated with absolute precision. But there were others who were greater interpreters."
Boult admired Nikisch "not so much for his musicianship but his amazing power of saying what he wanted with a bit of wood. He spoke very little". This style was in accord with Boult's opinion that "all conductors should be clad in an invisible Tarnhelm which makes it possible to enjoy the music without seeing any of the antics that go on". He sang in choral festivals and at the Leeds Festival of 1913, where he watched Nikisch conduct. There he made the acquaintance of George Butterworth, and other British composers. Later that year Boult joined the musical staff of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where his most important work was to assist with the first British production of Wagner's Parsifal, and do "odd jobs with lighting cues" while Nikisch conducted the Ring cycle.
### First conducting work
Boult made his début as a professional conductor on 27 February 1914 at West Kirby Public Hall, with members of the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. His programme comprised orchestral works by Bach, Butterworth, Mozart, Schumann, Wagner and Hugo Wolf, interspersed with arias by Mozart and Verdi sung by Agnes Nicholls.
Boult was declared medically unfit for active service during the First World War, and until 1916 he served as an orderly officer in a reserve unit. He was recruited by the War Office as a translator (he spoke good French, German and Italian). In his spare time he organised and conducted concerts, some of which were subsidised by his father, with the aims of giving work to orchestral players and bringing music to a wider audience.
In 1918, Boult conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a series of concerts that included important recent British works. Among them was the première of a revised version of Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony, a performance which was "rather spoilt by a Zeppelin raid". His best-known première of this period was Holst's The Planets. Boult conducted the first performance on 29 September 1918 to an invited audience of about 250. Holst later wrote on his copy of the score, "This copy is the property of Adrian Boult who first caused The Planets to shine in public and thereby earned the gratitude of Gustav Holst."
Elgar was another composer who had cause to be grateful to Boult. His Second Symphony had, since its premiere nine years earlier, received few performances. When Boult conducted it at the Queen's Hall in March 1920 to "great applause" and "frantic enthusiasm", the composer wrote to him: "With the sounds ringing in my ears I send a word of thanks for your splendid conducting of the Sym. ... I feel that my reputation in the future is safe in your hands." Elgar's friend and biographer, the violinist W. H. Reed, wrote that Boult's performance of Elgar's neglected work brought "the grandeur and nobility of the work" to wider public attention.
Boult took a wide variety of conducting jobs in the years following the war. In 1919, he succeeded Ernest Ansermet as musical director of Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. Although Ansermet gave Boult all the help he could in his preparations, there were fourteen ballets in the company's repertory – none of which Boult knew. In only a short period, Boult was required to master such scores as Petrushka, The Firebird, Scheherazade, La Boutique fantasque and The Good-Humoured Ladies.
In 1921, Boult conducted the British Symphony Orchestra for Vladimir Rosing's Opera Week at Aeolian Hall. He also took on an academic post. When Hugh Allen succeeded Sir Hubert Parry as principal of the Royal College of Music, he invited Boult to start a conducting class along the lines of Leipzig – the first such class in England. Boult ran the classes from 1919 to 1930. In 1921 he received a Doctorate of Music.
When Raymond Roze, the founder of the British Symphony Orchestra died in March 1920, Boult took over. He conducted the orchestra, made up of professional musicians who had served in the Army during the First World War, in a series of concerts at the Kingsway Hall.
### Birmingham
In 1923 Boult conducted the first season of the Robert Mayer concerts for children, but his participation in the following season was prevented by his appointment in 1924 as conductor of the Birmingham Festival Choral Society. This led to his becoming musical director of the City of Birmingham Orchestra, where he remained in charge for six years, attracting widespread attention with his adventurous programmes.
The advantage of the Birmingham post was that for the first time in his life Boult not only had his own orchestra, but sole control of programming as well; the only time in his life, he later said, when that was so. The disadvantages were that the orchestra was inadequately funded, the available venues (including the Town Hall) were unsatisfactory, the Birmingham Post'''s music critic, A. J. Symons, was a constant thorn in Boult's side, and the local concert-going public had conservative tastes. Despite this conservatism, Boult programmed as much innovative music as was practical, including works by Mahler, Stravinsky and Bruckner. Such departures from the repertoire expected by the regular concert-goers depressed the box-office takings, requiring subsidies from private benefactors, including Boult's family.
While at Birmingham Boult had the opportunity to conduct a number of operas, chiefly with the British National Opera Company, for which he conducted Die Walküre and Otello. He also conducted a diverse range of operas from such composers as Purcell, Mozart and Vaughan Williams. In 1928 he succeeded Vaughan Williams as conductor of the Bach Choir in London, a position he held until 1931.
### BBC Symphony Orchestra
Visits to London by the Hallé Orchestra and particularly the Berlin Philharmonic under Wilhelm Furtwängler in 1929, had highlighted the relatively poor standards of London orchestras. Sir Thomas Beecham and the director general of the BBC Sir John Reith were keen to establish a first-class symphony orchestra, and they agreed in principle to do so jointly. Only a small number of core players were recruited before negotiations foundered. Beecham withdrew, and with Malcolm Sargent soon established the rival London Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1930 Boult returned to London to succeed Percy Pitt as director of music at the BBC. On taking up the post, Boult and his department recruited enough musicians to bring the complement of the new BBC Symphony Orchestra to 114. A substantial number of these players performed at the 1930 Promenade Concerts under Sir Henry Wood, and the full BBC Symphony Orchestra gave its first concert on 22 October 1930, conducted by Boult at the Queen's Hall. The programme consisted of music by Wagner, Brahms, Saint-Saëns and Ravel. Of the 21 programmes in the orchestra's first season, Boult conducted nine and Wood five.
The reviews of the new orchestra were enthusiastic. The Times wrote of its "virtuosity" and of Boult's "superb" conducting. The Musical Times commented, "The boast of the B.B.C. that it intended to get together a first-class orchestra was not an idle one" and spoke of "exhilaration" at the playing. The Observer called the playing "altogether magnificent" and said that Boult "deserves an instrument of this fine calibre to work on, and the orchestra deserves a conductor of his efficiency and insight." After the initial concerts Reith was told by his advisers that the orchestra had played better for Boult than anyone else. Reith asked him if he wished to take on the chief conductorship, and if so whether he would resign as director of music or occupy both posts simultaneously. Boult opted for the latter. He later said that this was a rash decision, and that he could not have sustained the two roles at once without the efforts of his staff in the music department, which included Edward Clark, Julian Herbage and Kenneth Wright.
During the 1930s the BBC Symphony Orchestra became renowned for its high standard of playing and for Boult's capable performances of new and unfamiliar music. Like Henry Wood before him, Boult regarded it as his duty to give the best possible performances of a wide range of composers, including those whose works were not personally congenial to him. His biographer, Michael Kennedy, writes that there was a very short list of composers whose works Boult refused to conduct, "but it would be difficult to deduce who they were." Boult's pioneering work with the BBC included an early performance of Schoenberg's Variations, Op. 31, British premières, including Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck and Three Movements from the Lyric Suite, and world premières, including Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 4 in F minor and Bartók's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra. He introduced Mahler's Ninth Symphony to London in 1934, and Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra in 1946. Boult invited Anton Webern to conduct eight BBC concerts between 1931 and 1936.
The excellence of Boult's orchestra attracted leading international conductors. In its second season guest conductors included Richard Strauss, Felix Weingartner and Bruno Walter, followed, in later seasons, by Serge Koussevitzky, Beecham and Willem Mengelberg. Arturo Toscanini, widely regarded at the time as the world's leading conductor, conducted the BBC orchestra in 1935 and said that it was the finest he had ever directed. He returned to conduct the orchestra in 1937, 1938 and 1939.
During this period, Boult accepted some international guest conductorships, appearing with the Vienna Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, and New York Philharmonic orchestras. In 1936 and 1937 he headed European tours with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, giving concerts in Brussels, Paris, Zurich, Budapest and Vienna, where they were especially well received. During his BBC years, Boult did not entirely lose contact with the world of opera and his performances of Die Walküre at Covent Garden in 1931 and Fidelio at Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1930 were considered outstanding.
For many years, Boult had been a close friend of the tenor Steuart Wilson and his wife Ann, née Bowles. When, in the late 1920s, Wilson began to mistreat his wife, Boult took her side. She divorced Wilson in 1931. In 1933, Boult astonished those who knew his notorious shyness with women by marrying her and becoming a much-loved stepfather to her four children; the marriage lasted for the rest of his life. The enmity it provoked in Wilson had repercussions in Boult's later career. The stigma attached to divorce in Britain in the 1930s affected Wilson's career but not Boult's: Wilson was barred from performing in English cathedrals at the Three Choirs Festival but Boult was invited to conduct the orchestra at Westminster Abbey for the coronation of George VI in 1937.
During the Second World War the BBC Symphony Orchestra was evacuated first to Bristol, where it suffered from bombing, and later to Bedford. Boult strove to maintain standards and morale as he lost key players. Between 1939 and the end of the war, forty players left for active service or other activities. In 1942 Boult resigned as the BBC's director of music, while remaining chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. This move, made as a favour to the composer Arthur Bliss to provide a suitable war-time job for him, later came to be Boult's undoing at the BBC. Meanwhile, he made recordings of Elgar's Second Symphony, Holst's The Planets and Vaughan Williams's Job, A Masque for Dancing. At the end of the war Boult "found a changed attitude to the orchestra in the upper echelons of the BBC". Reith was no longer director general, and without his backing Boult had to fight hard to restore the orchestra to its pre-war glory.
On 29 September 1946 Boult conducted Britten's new Festival Overture, to inaugurate the BBC Third Programme. For this innovative cultural channel, Boult was concerned in pioneering ventures including the British premiere of Mahler's Third Symphony. The Times later said of this period, "The Third Programme could not possibly have had the scope which made it world-famous musically without Boult." Nevertheless, Boult's BBC days were numbered. When he was appointed in 1930, Reith had informally promised him that would be exempt from the BBC's rule that staff must retire at age 60. However, Reith had left the BBC in 1938 and his promise carried no weight with his successors. In 1948 Steuart Wilson was appointed head of music at the BBC, the post previously occupied by Boult and Bliss. He made it clear from the start of his appointment that he intended that Boult should be replaced as chief conductor, and he used his authority to insist on Boult's enforced retirement. The director general of the BBC at the time, Sir William Haley, was unaware of Wilson's animus against Boult and later acknowledged, in a broadcast tribute to Boult, that he "had listened to ill-judged advice in retiring him." By the time of his retirement in 1950, Boult had made 1,536 broadcasts.
### London Philharmonic
After it became clear that Boult would have to leave the BBC, Thomas Russell, the managing director of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), offered him the post of principal conductor of the LPO in succession to Eduard van Beinum. In the 1930s the LPO had flourished, but since Beecham's departure in 1940, it had struggled to survive. Boult was well known to the orchestra, having been among the musicians who came to its aid in 1940. He took over as chief conductor of the LPO in June 1950, immediately after leaving the BBC, and threw himself into the task of rebuilding it. In the early years of his conductorship, the finances of the LPO were perilous, and Boult subsidised the orchestra from his own funds for some time. The need to earn money obliged the orchestra to play many more concerts than its rivals. In the 1949–50 season, the LPO gave 248 concerts, compared with 55 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, 103 by the London Symphony Orchestra, and 32 apiece by the Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic orchestras.
Although he had worked extensively in the studio for the BBC, Boult had, up to this point, recorded only a part of his large repertoire for the gramophone. With the LPO he began a series of commercial recordings that continued at a varying rate for the rest of his working life. Their first recordings together were Elgar's Falstaff, Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with the mezzo-soprano Blanche Thebom, and Beethoven's First Symphony. The work of the new team was greeted with approval by the reviewers. Of the Elgar, The Gramophone wrote, "I have heard no other conductor approach [Boult's] performance. ... His newly adopted orchestra responds admirably". In The Manchester Guardian, Neville Cardus wrote, "Nobody is better able than Sir Adrian Boult to expound the subtly mingled contents of this master work."
In January 1951 Boult and the LPO made a tour of Germany, described by Kennedy as "gruelling", with 12 concerts on 12 successive days. The symphonies they played were Beethoven's Seventh, Haydn's London, No 104, Brahms's First, Schumann's Fourth and Schubert's Great C major. The other works were Elgar's Introduction and Allegro, Holst's The Perfect Fool ballet music, Richard Strauss's Don Juan, and Stravinsky's Firebird.
In 1952 the LPO negotiated a five-year contract with Decca Records, which was unusually rewarding for the orchestra, giving it a 10 per cent commission on most sales. On top of this, Boult always contributed his share of the recording fees to the orchestra's funds. In the same year, the LPO survived a crisis when Russell was dismissed as its managing director. He was an avowed member of the Communist party; when the Cold War began some influential members of the LPO felt that Russell's private political affiliations compromised the orchestra, and pressed for his dismissal. Boult, as the orchestra's chief conductor, stood up for Russell, but when matters came to a head Boult ceased to protect him. Deprived of that crucial support, Russell was forced out. Kennedy speculates that Boult's change of mind was due to a growing conviction that the orchestra would be "seriously jeopardized financially" if Russell remained in post. A later writer, Richard Witts, suggests that Boult sacrificed Russell because he believed doing so would enhance the LPO's chance of being appointed resident orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall.
In 1953 Boult once again took charge of the orchestral music at a coronation, conducting an ensemble drawn from UK orchestras at the coronation of Elizabeth II. During the proceedings, he conducted the first performances of Bliss's Processional and Walton's march Orb and Sceptre. In the same year he returned to the Proms after a three-year absence, conducting the LPO. The notices were mixed: The Times found a Brahms symphony "rather colourless, imprecise and uninspiring", but praised Boult and the orchestra's performance of The Planets. In the same year the orchestra celebrated its 21st birthday, giving a series of concerts at the Festival Hall and the Royal Albert Hall in which Boult was joined by guest conductors including Paul Kletzki, Jean Martinon, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Georg Solti, Walter Susskind and Vaughan Williams.
In 1956 Boult and the LPO visited Russia. Boult had not wished to go on the tour because flying hurt his ears, and long land journeys hurt his back. The Soviet authorities threatened to cancel the tour if he did not lead it, and he felt obliged to go. The LPO gave nine concerts in Moscow and four in Leningrad. Boult's assistant conductors were Anatole Fistoulari and George Hurst. Boult's four Moscow programmes included Vaughan Williams's Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, Holst's The Planets, Walton's Violin Concerto (with Alfredo Campoli as soloist), and Schubert's Great C major Symphony. While in Moscow, Boult and his wife visited the Bolshoi Opera and were guests at the composer Dmitri Shostakovich's 50th birthday party.
After the Russian tour, Boult told the LPO that he wished to step down from the principal conductorship. He continued to be the orchestra's main conductor until his successor William Steinberg took up the post in 1959. After the sudden resignation of Andrzej Panufnik from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), Boult returned as principal conductor of the CBSO for the 1959–60 season. That was his last chief conductorship, though he remained closely associated with the LPO as its president and a guest conductor until his retirement.
### Later years
After stepping down from the chief conductorship of the LPO, Boult was, for a few years, less in demand in the recording studio and the concert hall. Nevertheless, he was invited to conduct in Vienna, Amsterdam and Boston. In 1964 he made no recordings, but in 1965 he began an association with Lyrita records, an independent label specialising in British music. In the same year he resumed recording for EMI after a six-year break. Celebrations for his eightieth birthday in 1969 also raised his profile in the musical world. After the death of his colleague Sir John Barbirolli in 1970, Boult was seen as "the sole survivor of a great generation" and a living link with Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Holst. In the words of The Guardian, "it was when he reached his late seventies that the final and most glorious period of his career developed." He ceased to accept overseas invitations, but conducted in the major British cities, as well as at the Festival and Albert Halls and began what is frequently called his "Indian Summer" in the concert hall and recording studio. He was featured in a 1971 film The Point of the Stick, in which he illustrated his conducting technique with musical examples.
At a spare recording session in August 1970 Boult recorded the Third Symphony of Brahms. This was well received and led to a series of recordings of Brahms, Wagner, Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven. His repertoire in general was much wider than his discography might suggest. It was a disappointment to him that he was rarely invited to conduct in the opera house, and he relished the opportunity to record extensive excerpts from the Wagner operas in the 1970s. Having conducted several ballets at Covent Garden during the 1970s, Boult gave his last public performance conducting Elgar's ballet The Sanguine Fan for the London Festival Ballet at the London Coliseum on 24 June 1978. His final record, completed in December 1978, was of music by Hubert Parry. Boult formally retired from conducting in 1981. He died in London in 1983, aged 93, leaving his body to medical science.
## Musicianship
A review in The Observer of Boult's second London concert, in 1918, said, "Having, apparently, a thorough knowledge of the work, he was content to let it speak for itself without having recourse to those aids to success which are a constant temptation to conductors." Sixty-five years later, in an obituary tribute, Peter Heyworth wrote in the same newspaper: "From Nikisch he had early acquired an immaculate stick technique and was quietly scathing about conductors who used their anatomy to indicate their artistic requirements. ... In an occupation ridden with inflated egos and circus tricksters Boult brought a rare probity to everything he undertook."
Boult's biographer, Kennedy, gave this summary: "In the music he admired most, Boult was often a great conductor; in the rest, an extremely conscientious one. ... If from behind he seemed unexciting and unemotional, the players could see the animation in his face – and he was capable of frightening outbursts of temper at rehearsals. Tall and erect, with something of the military in his appearance ... he seemed the personification of the English gentleman. But recipients of his cutting wit and occasional sarcasm knew that this was not the whole picture." Grove's Dictionary similarly said of him:
> Of the leading British conductors of his time, Boult was the least sensational but not the least remarkable. He made no attempt to cultivate a public image. He was neither oracle, orator nor professional wit, but he expressed himself with trenchancy, and his gentlemanly self-control was occasionally ruffled by storms of anger. ... [T]here were nights when the physical impact of his conducting was low, and there was little beyond faithfulness to the notes. There were others when precise, sensitive stick technique, loyalty to the composer, selflessness and ability to see the music as a whole, produced results equally satisfying in the classics and the British music he understood so well.
Boult, unlike many of his contemporaries, preferred the traditional orchestral layout, with first violins on the conductor's left and the seconds on the right. Of the modern layout with all violins on the left, he wrote, "The new seating is, I admit, easier for the conductor and the second violins, but I firmly maintain that the second violins themselves sound far better on the right. ... When the new fashion reached us from America somewhere about 1908 it was adopted by some conductors, but Richter, Weingartner, Walter, Toscanini and many others kept what I feel is the right balance."
This care for balance was an important feature of Boult's music-making. Orchestral players across decades commented on his insistence that every important part should be heard without difficulty. His BBC principal violist wrote in 1938, "If a woodwind player has to complain that he has already been blowing 'fit to burst' there is trouble for somebody." The trombonist Raymond Premru wrote forty years later, "One of the old school, like Boult, is so refreshing because he will reduce the dynamic level – 'No, no, pianissimo, strings, let the soloist through, less from everyone else.' That is the old idea of balance."
As an educator, Boult influenced several generations of musicians, beginning with his conducting class at the Royal College of Music, London, which he ran from 1919 to 1930. As no such classes had been held before in Britain, Boult "created its curriculum from out of his own experience. ... From that first small class has come all the later formal training for conductors throughout Britain." In the 1930s Boult ran a series of "conferences for conductors" at his country house near Guildford, sometimes helped by Vaughan Williams who lived a few miles away. From 1962 to 1966 he again taught at the Royal College of Music. In later life, he made time for young conductors who sought his counsel. Among those who studied with or were influenced by Boult were Colin Davis, James Loughran, Richard Hickox and Vernon Handley. The last was not only a pupil of Boult, but acted as his musical assistant on many occasions.
## Honours and memorials
Boult was created a Knight Bachelor in 1937 and was created a Companion of Honour (CH) in 1969. He received the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1944 and the Harvard Glee Club medal (jointly with Vaughan Williams) in 1956. He received honorary degrees and fellowships from 13 universities and conservatoires. In 1951 he was invited to be the first president of the Elgar Society. In 1959 he was made president of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music. In the north choir aisle of Westminster Abbey is a small memorial stone to Boult which was unveiled on 8 April 1984.
Boult's old school, Westminster, has a music centre named in his honour, and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire included in its home building the Adrian Boult Hall. The hall was used for classical concerts, other musical performances, and conferences. The hall was demolished in June 2016 as part of a redevelopment project.
In the June 2013 issue of Gramophone Boult was added to the magazine's Hall of Fame which recognises musicians who have made a lasting impact on the world of recorded classical music.
## Recordings
Boult was a prolific recording artist. Unlike many musicians, he felt at home in the recording studio and actually preferred working without an audience. His recording career stretched from the days of acoustic recording until the beginning of the digital era. His last recording of The Planets made in May 1978 was taped in experimental digital sound, although technical problems led EMI to release an analogue version.
Boult's recordings fall into three main periods. In the first, from 1920 to the end of the 1940s, he recorded almost exclusively for HMV/EMI. In the 1950s and early 1960s, he was less in demand by the major labels, and although he made a substantial number of discs for Decca, he recorded mostly for smaller labels, chiefly Pye Nixa. His last period, from the mid-1960s, sometimes referred to as his Indian Summer, was once again with HMV. With his regular collaborators the producer Christopher Bishop and the engineer Christopher Parker he made more than sixty recordings, re-recording much of his key repertoire in stereo. He also added many works to his discography that he had not recorded before.
Of the British composers, Boult extensively recorded and sometimes re-recorded major works by Elgar and Vaughan Williams. He recorded all eight then-existing symphonies by Vaughan Williams for Decca Records in the 1950s with the LPO, in the presence of the composer. The recording producer, John Culshaw, wrote that the composer "said very little during the sessions because he was totally in favour of Sir Adrian's approach to his music." Vaughan Williams was to have been present for the first recording of his Ninth symphony, for Everest Records in 1958, but he died the night before the session took place; Boult recorded a short introduction as a memorial tribute. All these recordings have been reissued on CD. In the 1960s Boult re-recorded the nine symphonies for EMI.
Other British composers who feature significantly in Boult's discography include Holst, Ireland, Parry, and Walton. Despite his reputation as a pioneer in Britain of the works of the Second Viennese School and other avant-garde composers, the record companies, unlike the BBC, remained cautious about recording him in this repertory, and only a single recording of a Berg piece represents this side of Boult's work. In the core continental orchestral repertoire, Boult's recordings of the four symphonies of Brahms, and the Great C major Symphony of Schubert were celebrated in his lifetime and have remained in the catalogues during the three decades after his death. Late in his recording career he recorded four discs of excerpts from Wagner's operas, which received great critical praise. The exceptional breadth of Boult's repertoire has left some well-regarded recordings of works not immediately associated with him, among which are versions of Berlioz’s Ouvertures'' (recorded in 1956), Franck's Symphony (recorded in 1959), Dvořák's Cello Concerto with Mstislav Rostropovich (1958), and a pioneering recording of Mahler's Third Symphony taped live in 1947.
## Notes, references and sources
|
55,728,902 |
Delicate (Taylor Swift song)
| 1,171,816,090 |
2018 single by Taylor Swift
|
[
"2010s ballads",
"2017 songs",
"2018 singles",
"Big Machine Records singles",
"Electronica songs",
"Music videos directed by Joseph Kahn",
"Song recordings produced by Max Martin",
"Song recordings produced by Shellback (record producer)",
"Songs written by Max Martin",
"Songs written by Shellback (record producer)",
"Songs written by Taylor Swift",
"Taylor Swift songs",
"Vertically oriented music videos"
] |
"Delicate" is a song by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, taken from her sixth studio album, Reputation (2017). Swift wrote the song with producers Max Martin and Shellback. Inspired by events surrounding Swift's celebrity and personal life, the lyrics depicts a narrator's vulnerability when she ponders if her reputation would affect the blossoming romance. "Delicate" is an electropop and synth-pop ballad that features vocals manipulated with a vocoder. Its production incorporates dense synthesizers and beats that evoke tropical house and dancehall.
The song's music video, directed by Joseph Kahn and filmed in Los Angeles, premiered on March 11, 2018, at the iHeartRadio Music Awards. In the video, after becoming invisible upon receiving a mysterious note, Swift dances barefoot through public places, and ultimately becomes visible again after dancing in a pouring rain. Critics interpreted the video as Swift's autobiographical reference to her personal life, as she had retreated herself from the press while promoting Reputation. A day following the video's release, "Delicate" was released to US radio stations by Big Machine and Republic Records, as the fourth mainstream radio single from the album.
"Delicate" received widespread acclaim from music critics, who praised Swift's songwriting and the song's mellower production compared to the album's overarching brash sound. It featured in 2018 year-end lists by Billboard, Slant Magazine, and Rolling Stone. A sleeper hit in the United States, "Delicate" peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped Billboard's airplay charts: Mainstream Top 40, Adult Contemporary, and Adult Pop Songs. It was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The single peaked within the top 40 of singles charts in Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Norway, and received platinum certifications in Australia and Brazil.
## Background
American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift released her fifth studio album, 1989, in October 2014. 1989's synth-pop production transformed Swift's sound and image from country-oriented to mainstream pop. The album was a commercial success, selling over five million copies in the United States within one year, and spawning three Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles. The BBC asserted that the success solidified Swift's status as a global pop star.
Swift was a target of tabloid gossip during the promotion of 1989. Her "America's Sweetheart" reputation, a result of her wholesome and innocent image, was blemished from publicized short-lived relationships and disputes with other celebrities, including a dispute with rapper Kanye West and media personality Kim Kardashian. Swift became increasingly reticent on social media, having previously maintained an active presence with a large following, and avoided interactions with the press amidst the tumultuous affairs. She conceived her sixth studio album, Reputation, as an answer to the media commotion surrounding her celebrity.
## Production and composition
Swift wrote "Delicate" with its producers, Max Martin and Shellback. It was engineered by Sam Holland and Michael Ilbert at MXM Studios in Stockholm, Sweden, and Los Angeles, California. The song was mixed by Şerban Ghenea at MixStar Studios in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and it was mastered by Randy Merrill at Sterling Sound Studios in New York.
Swift conceived "Delicate" as a confession to a prospective lover and described the song—the fifth track on Reputation—as the album's "first point of vulnerability". The preceding four tracks are about Swift's flippant disinterest in her perceived reputation, which is the recurring theme throughout the album. On "Delicate", she begins to reveal her inner vulnerability. Swift explained the song's meaning during an album release party with iHeartRadio: although she could feign disinterest in others' opinions about her, things became complicated "when you meet somebody that you really want in your life", which prompted her to wonder, "Could something fake like your reputation affect something real, like someone getting to know you?" To create a sound that reflects the lyrics' vulnerable sentiment, Martin and Shellback manipulated Swift's vocals with a vocoder, which Swift thought sounded "really emotional, vulnerable, and ... sad but beautiful". This vocoder effect is recurring on subsequent Reputation tracks.
"Delicate" is a mellow ballad driven by dense synthesizers; critics described the genre as electropop or synth-pop. As with the rest of Reputation, the track incorporates prominent urban styles: it features a Caribbean-inflected sound showcased through the rhythmic vocal delivery and the beats that evoke tropical house and dancehall. At the beginning of the song, Swift's character tells her lover that, because her reputation has "never been worse", he "must like [her] for [herself]". Critic Carl Wilson from Slate interpreted this part as Swift's revelation on her public image: after the media gossip, she achieved a "liberation" that allowed her to "make her private life her own at last". She shares intimate moments with her love interest at a dive bar "on the East Side". Throughout the song, Swift goes through her inner monolog about whether what she does would affect this blossoming romance and how much her feelings would be reciprocated, over a muted pulse: "Is it cool that I said all that? Is it too soon to do this yet? 'Cause I know that it's delicate." Though she feigns confidence and tries to control her inner self-awareness, she admits: "I pretend you're mine all the damn time." In the refrain, a high-pitched voice echoes the title "Delicate" back to Swift's lyrics.
## Release
The music video of "Delicate" premiered at the 2018 iHeartRadio Music Awards on March 11. Following the video's premiere, Big Machine and Republic Records released the song to US hot adult contemporary radio stations on March 12, and US contemporary hit radio on March 13, as Reputation's fourth pop radio single. Swift released another music video for the song—shot in a vertical format—exclusively on Spotify for users in the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Latin America, on March 30, 2018. It was available on YouTube for audiences worldwide on May 15. In Europe, "Delicate" was available for digital download in Germany on March 12, and to Italian and UK radio stations on April 20, 2018.
As part of the Spotify Singles series, Swift recorded a stripped-down version of "Delicate" using acoustic guitars in place of the original version's synthesizers. The version was released alongside Swift's cover of Earth, Wind & Fire's "September" as a two-track extended play (EP) on April 13, 2018, by Spotify. Two official remixes supported "Delicate": one by Sawyr and Ryan Tedder, available on May 25, and the other by Seeb, available on June 8, 2018.
## Music video
### Synopsis
Directed by Joseph Kahn, the music video was shot over two nights in Los Angeles; landmarks featured include the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, the 7th Street/Metro Center station, the Los Angeles Theater, and the Golden Gopher bar. The video opens with Swift on the red carpet, seeming disconnected from the crowd gazing off in the distance. She snaps back to reality as a reporter points a microphone at her face for an interview. Amidst camera lights, a mysterious figure slips a sparkling paper note into her hand.
After the red-carpet interviews, Swift walks into a hotel lobby surrounded by four bodyguards as the guests turn around and look at her. Swift is bothered by the attention toward her, and when she gets some privacy in a dressing room, she turns the note over in her hand and makes silly faces in the mirror before being interrupted by a group of women. When she turns back to the mirror, the note sparkles and she realizes she has become invisible as her reflection in the mirror disappears.
Thrilled by her newfound freedom from fame, Swift starts dancing barefoot through the hotel. Though she seems elated by her invisibility, there are poignant moments—at one scene in an elevator with another woman, Swift thinks that woman is smiling at her, but she is in fact looking at her own reflection in the mirror. Swift continues dancing through a subway platform, and dances in a pouring rain before arriving at a dive bar. As she holds the note, everyone in the bar turns and looks at her, and she is visible again, smiling.
### Analysis and reception
Media outlets considered the video's depiction of Swift's invisibility from the crowd an autobiographical reference, given that she had not given press interviews while promoting Reputation. Writing for The Washington Post, Emily Yahr described the video as a representation of Swift's celebrity. Yahr explained that the scenes where Swift appears jaded from the reporters and bodyguards were parallel to Swift's retreat from the press, and called her invisibility a metaphor for "the only time she's able to be herself". Denise Warner from Billboard wrote that the video's depiction of Swift being "clearly disturbed by her fame" resembled the narrative of Britney Spears's 2000 video "Lucky". In another analysis for Billboard, Richard He wrote: "Swift's a singer and guitarist by trade, but through her dancing and facial expressions, she's learned to tell stories with her whole body." According to He, while the lyrics to "Delicate" were inspired by Swift's love life, the video was inspired by her relationship with her audience. He observed that her cathartic, honest, and rather awkward dancing "for the pure joy of music" reminded her audience of "the reason she began writing songs in the first place". The video won Best Music Video at the 2019 iHeartRadio Music Awards.
Upon the video's release, some commentators on the internet accused "Delicate" of plagiarizing an advertisement directed by Spike Jonze in 2016 for "Kenzo World", a fragrance by the French brand Kenzo. As noted by Emma Payne—a scholar in music and cinema in the digital era—both visuals depict a woman who "breaks free from the pressures of society and acts freely as though nobody is watching"; to express this sentiment, both feature a choreography made up of unconventional dance moves, such as "marching and stomping" and "animalistic squatting", intertwined with conventional ballet moves. Payne commented that in doing so, the video allows the audience to see the "real" Swift beyond her commercially marketed image. She noted, nonetheless, due to the plagiarism controversy, Swift's persona was scrutinized for being "insincere or fake", a claim that had perpetuated since her earlier "dorky" image.
## Critical reception
Music critics lauded Swift's songwriting on "Delicate". Roisin O'Connor of The Independent described the song as an example of Swift's "most honest and direct songwriting". AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine similarly praised Swift's portrayal of vulnerability as "a necessary exercise" for her to mature as a singer-songwriter. Ann Powers writing for NPR called "Delicate" one of Reputation's "most memorable tracks", and described it as a reminder of Swift's songwriting talents in creating personal and relatable songs about her generation's "fashion choices, modes of gossip, dating habits and dreams of a comfortable middle-class life". To explain this viewpoint, Powers highlighted the lyrics mentioning Swift's love interest in Nike shoes: "In 21st-century America, 'Nikes' is as evocative a word as 'heartache' or 'promise.' Swift understands the heart that beats beneath the brand name."
Other critics highlighted the song's mellower production and vulnerable sentiment, in contrast to Reputation's heavy electronic production and themes about drama and vengeance. Zach Schonfeld of Newsweek complimented "Delicate" for offering a heartfelt atmosphere in contrast with "the bravado and EDM aggression of the opening tracks". In a similar vein, Troy Smith from The Plain Dealer called it one of the album's better songs because "Swift keeps the mood light". For Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine, the song's blending "scathing self-critique with effervescent pop" offers an enjoyable moment that contrasts with the album's dominant "tired, repetitive EDM tricks". Clash editor Shahzaib Hussain criticized Reputation as a pretentious album with excessive lyrics about fame, but praised "Delicate" as one of the tracks that offer emotional honesty. On a less enthusiastic side, Spin's Jordan Sargent wrote that even though the song is one of Reputation's most honest, it is still "unshackled" from the album's recurring themes of drama and vengeance. Sargent, however, noted that production-wise, it contains an "ethereal lusciousness" that hints at "new paths for her to travel".
Retrospectively, critics have considered "Delicate" one of Swift's strongest songs. Paste's Jane Song, NME's Hannah Mylrae, and Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield all lauded the song's depiction of vulnerability in terms of both lyrics and music, specifically through the vocoder effects. Sheffield ranked it first on his list of the best songs of 2017: "At heart, 'Delicate' is a story about a girl in her room, hearing an electro-beat that lures her to go seek some scandalous adventures in the city lights. In other words, the story of pop music." He ranked "Delicate" fourth on his 2021 ranking of all the 199 songs in Swift's discography. The song featured on 2018 year-end lists by Slant Magazine (9th), Rolling Stone (12th), and Billboard (35th). "Delicate" was one of the award-winning songs at the BMI Pop Awards (2019), and the ASCAP Awards (2019 and 2020).
## Commercial performance
"Delicate" was a sleeper hit in the United States. Upon its single release in March 2018, it entered at number 84 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 32 on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 (Pop Songs) chart. By May, the single entered the top 40 of the Hot 100, fueled by gains in airplay, giving Swift her 56th top-40 entry. In doing so, it extended Swift's record as the woman with the most Hot 100 top-40 entries. In its sixteenth charting week by July, "Delicate" rose to the Hot 100's top 20, driven primarily by strong airplay. It was the second single from Reputation to enter the top 10 of Billboard's Radio Songs chart (peaking at number two), after lead single "Look What You Made Me Do". A radio-driven hit, "Delicate" peaked atop the Mainstream Top 40 (Pop Songs) chart, and was Reputation's first number-one single on the Billboard Adult Top 40 (Adult Pop Songs) and Adult Contemporary charts. It became the biggest radio hit from Reputation.
Overall, "Delicate" peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, spending a total of 35 weeks on the chart, becoming the longest-charting single from Reputation. The single was one of the 10 most successful songs on US airplay of 2018, culminating 2.509 billion radio audience impressions. It was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which denotes two million units consisted of sales and on-demand streaming. Philip Cosores from Uproxx claimed that the single was Reputation's biggest hit, surpassing the Hot 100 number one "Look What You Made Me Do", which "found a place in cultural ubiquity, but ... felt more like an obligation than an outright choice". Writing for Billboard, Andrew Unterberger described the chart success of "Delicate" as a "turnaround in momentum" for Swift during the Reputation era. While the preceding singles did not chart more than 20 weeks, "Delicate" continued to grow, especially in airplay, and got "bigger the longer audiences have spent with it". Unterberger attributed the single's success to its vulnerable sentiment and production, a departure from the "outwardly vindictive" sentiments of its preceding singles, which proved that "[the audience] too still like Taylor for Taylor".
"Delicate" peaked within the top 20 on singles charts of Iceland (3), Honduras (11), Malaysia (14), the Czech Republic (19), and Canada (20). It was a top-40 chart entry in Greece, Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway (where it was certified gold), and Australia (where it was certified platinum). The single was certified platinum in Brazil, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, where it charted outside the top 40.
## Live performances and covers
Swift included "Delicate" on the set list of her Reputation Stadium Tour (2018). During the concerts, she performed the song while standing in a golden balloon basket that floated above across the crowd. Swift performed an acoustic version of the song on a guitar at BBC Radio 1's Biggest Weekend on May 27, 2018 in Swansea. On December 6, 2018, Swift made an unannounced appearance at the Ally Coalition Talent Show, a benefit concert organized by producer Jack Antonoff in New York, where she performed an acoustic rendition of "Delicate" with Hayley Kiyoko.
On April 23, 2019, Swift performed an acoustic version of the song at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts during the Time 100 Gala, where she was honored as one of the "100 most influential people" of the year. During promotion of her seventh studio album Lover in 2019, Swift performed the song at the Wango Tango festival on June 1, at the Amazon Prime Day concert on July 10, and at the City of Lover one-off concert in Paris on September 9. "Delicate" was included on the set list of Swift's sixth headlining concert tour, the Eras Tour (2023).
On May 23, 2018, British singer-songwriter James Bay covered "Delicate" as part of his BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge. American singer Kelly Clarkson performed the song in her daytime talk show, The Kelly Clarkson Show.
## Credits and personnel
Credits are adapted from the liner notes of Reputation.
- Taylor Swift – vocals, songwriter
- Max Martin – producer, songwriter, programming, keyboards
- Shellback – producer, songwriter, programming, keyboards
- Sam Holland – engineer
- Michael Ilbert – engineer
- Cory Bice – assistant engineer
- Jeremy Lertola – assistant engineer
- Şerban Ghenea – mixing
- John Hanes – mix engineer
- Randy Merrill – mastering
## Charts
### Weekly charts
### Year-end charts
## Certifications
## Release history
## See also
- List of Billboard Adult Top 40 number-one songs of the 2010s
- List of Billboard Adult Contemporary number-one songs of 2018
- List of Billboard Mainstream Top 40 number-one songs of 2018
- Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 2018
|
57,871,368 |
Limalok
| 1,173,476,588 |
Cretaceous-Paleocene guyot in the Marshall Islands
|
[
"Extinct volcanoes",
"Landforms of the Marshall Islands",
"Mesozoic volcanoes",
"Seamounts of the Pacific Ocean"
] |
Limalok (formerly known as Harrie or Harriet) is a Cretaceous-Paleocene guyot/tablemount in the southeastern Marshall Islands, one of a number of seamounts (a type of underwater volcanic mountain) in the Pacific Ocean. It was probably formed by a volcanic hotspot in present-day French Polynesia. Limalok lies southeast of Mili Atoll and Knox Atoll, which rise above sea level, and is joined to each of them through a volcanic ridge. It is located at a depth of 1,255 metres (4,117 ft) and has a summit platform with an area of 636 square kilometres (246 sq mi).
Limalok is formed by basaltic rocks and was probably a shield volcano at first; the Macdonald, Rarotonga, Rurutu and Society hotspots may have been involved in its formation. After volcanic activity ceased, the volcano was eroded and thereby flattened, and a carbonate platform formed on it during the Paleocene and Eocene. These carbonates were chiefly produced by red algae, forming an atoll or atoll-like structure with reefs.
The platform sank below sea level 48 ± 2 million years ago during the Eocene, perhaps because it moved through the equatorial area, which was too hot or nutrient-rich to support the growth of a coral reef. Thermal subsidence lowered the drowned seamount to its present depth. After a hiatus lasting into the Miocene, sedimentation commenced on the seamount leading to the deposition of manganese crusts and pelagic sediments; phosphate accumulated in some sediments over time.
## Name and research history
Limalok was formerly known as Harrie Guyot and is also known as Harriet Guyot; Limalok refers to a traditional chieftess of Mile Atoll. Limalok is one of the seamounts targeted during the Ocean Drilling Program, which was a research program that aimed at elucidating the geological history of the sea by obtaining drill cores from the oceans. The proportion of material recovered during the drilling was low, making it difficult to reconstruct the geologic history of Limalok.
## Geography and geology
### Local setting
Limalok lies at the southernmost end of the Ratak Chain in the southeastern Marshall Islands in the western Pacific Ocean. Mili Atoll is located 53.7 kilometres (33.4 mi) from Limalok, with Knox Atoll in between the two.
The relatively small seamount rises from a depth of 4,500 metres (14,800 ft) to a minimum depth of 1,255 metres (4,117 ft) below sea level. The top of Limalok is 47.5 kilometres (29.5 mi) long and broadens southeastward from less than 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) to more than 24 kilometres (15 mi), forming a 636-square-kilometre (246 sq mi) summit platform. The carbonate platform of Limalok crops out at the edges of the summit plateau. Wide terraces and numerous fault blocks surround the summit plateau; some of the latter may have formed after the carbonate platform ceased growing.
Mili Atoll and Limalok emerge from a common pedestal and are connected by a ridge at 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) depth. The seafloor is 152–158 million years old, but it is possible that Limalok rises from Cretaceous flood basalts rather than the seafloor itself. Volcanic sediments in the Eastern Mariana Basin may come from this seamount.
### Regional setting
The Pacific Ocean seafloor, especially the parts that are of Mesozoic age, contains most of the world's guyots (also known as tablemounts). These are submarine mountains which are characterized by steep slopes, a flat top and usually the presence of corals and carbonate platforms. These structures originally formed as volcanoes in the Mesozoic Ocean. Fringing reefs may have developed on the volcanoes, which then were replaced by barrier reefs as the volcanoes subsided and turned into atolls. Continued subsidence balanced by upward growth of the reefs led to the formation of thick carbonate platforms. Volcanic activity can occur even after the formation of the atoll or atoll-like landforms, and during episodes where the platforms were lifted above sea level, erosional features such as channels and blue holes developed. The crust underneath these seamounts tends to subside as it cools and thus the islands and seamounts sink.
The formation of many seamounts including Limalok has been explained with the hotspot theory, in which a "hot spot" rising from the mantle leads to the formation of chains of volcanoes which get progressively older along the length of the chain, with an active volcano at only one end of the system, as the plate moves over the hotspot. Seamounts and islands in the Marshall Islands do not appear to have originated from simple age-progressive hotspot volcanism as the age progressions in the individual island and seamount chains are often inconsistent with this explanation. One solution to this dilemma may be that more than one hotspot passed through the Marshall Islands, and it is also possible that hotspot volcanism was affected by extensional deformation of the lithosphere. For Limalok, geochemical evidence shows affinities to the Rarotonga hotspot which is unlike the geochemical trends in the other volcanoes of the Ratak Chain. Reconstructions of the area's geological history suggest that the first hotspot to pass by Limalok was the Macdonald hotspot 95–85 million years ago, followed by the Rurutu hotspot and the Society hotspot 75–65 million years ago. The Rarotonga and especially the Rurutu hotspots are considered to be the most likely candidates for the hotspot that formed Limalok. However, some paleogeographical inconsistencies indicate that lithospheric fractures secondary to hotspot activity were also involved.
From plate motion reconstructions, it has been established that the Marshall Islands were located in the era now occupied by present-day French Polynesia during the time of active volcanism. Both regions display numerous island chains, anomalously shallow ocean floors and the presence of volcanoes. About eight hotspots have formed a large number of islands and seamounts in that region, with disparate geochemistries; the geological province has been called "South Pacific Isotopic and Thermal Anomaly" or DUPAL anomaly.
### Composition
Limalok has erupted basaltic rocks, which have been classified as alkali basalts, basanite and nephelinite. Minerals contained in the rocks are apatite, augite, biotite, clinopyroxene, olivine, nepheline and plagioclase, and there are ultramafic xenoliths. Shallow crystal fractionation processes appear to have been involved in the genesis of the magmas erupted by Limalok.
Alteration of the original material has formed calcite, chlorite, clay, iddingsite, montmorillonite, zeolite, and a mineral that could be celadonite. Volcanogenic sandstones and traces of hydrothermal alteration also exist on Limalok.
Carbonate, clay, manganese phosphate crust materials and mudstones have been found in boreholes or have been dredged from the seamount. The carbonates take various forms, such as grainstone, packstone, limestone, rudstone and wackestone. Porosity is usually low owing to cementation of the deposits, a process in which grains in rock are solidified and pores filled by the deposition of minerals such as calcium carbonate. The carbonate rocks show widespread evidence of diagenetic alteration, meaning the carbonates have been chemically or physically modified after they were buried. For example, aragonite, pyrite and organic material were formed by alteration of living beings within the clays and limestones.
## Geologic history
Limalok is the youngest guyot in the Marshall Islands. Argon-argon dating has yielded ages of 69.2 and 68.2 ± 0.5 million years ago on volcanic rocks dredged from Limalok. Mili Atoll volcano is probably not much younger than Limalok. During the Cretaceous Limalok was probably located in French Polynesia; paleomagnetism indicates that Limalok formed at 15–10 degrees southern latitude. Early limestones dredged from Limalok were considered to be of Eocene age (56–33.9 million years ago) before earlier Paleocene deposits were discovered as well.
### Volcanism and first biotic phenomena
Limalok first formed as a shield volcano. The volcanic rocks were emplaced as lava flows with thicknesses reaching 1–7 metres (3 ft 3 in – 23 ft 0 in). In addition, breccia and pebbles encased within sediments occur.
Soils formed on the volcano through the weathering of volcanic rocks, reaching a thickness of 28.6 metres (94 ft); claystones and laterites were also generated through weathering. These deposits formed over a long time on an island that rose at least several metres above sea level – the estimated time it took to generate the soil profiles obtained in drill cores is about 1–3 million years. Thermal subsidence of the crust and erosion flattened the seamount before carbonate deposition commenced on Limalok, and it is possible that the growth of another volcano south of Limalok 1–2 million years after Limalok developed may be responsible for a southward tilt of the seamount.
The soils on Limalok were colonized by vegetation that left plant cuticle and woody tissues; angiosperms including palms, ferns and fungi with an overall low diversity developed on the volcano. Organisms burrowed into the soils, leaving cavities. The climate was probably tropical to subtropical, with an annual precipitation of less than 1,000 millimetres per year (39 in/year).
### Platform carbonates and reefs
The erosion of the volcanic island was followed after some time by the beginning of carbonate platform growth. Sedimentation began in the Paleocene with one or two events in which the seamount was submerged; the start of sedimentation has been dated to about 57.5 ± 2.5 million years ago. After a Paleocene phase with open sea or back-reef conditions, lagoonal environments developed on the seamount during the Eocene. It is possible that the platform periodically emerged above sea level, leading to its erosion. It is not clear if the platform took the form of an atoll, or of a shallow platform shielded on one side by islands or shoals, similar to the present-day Bahama Banks. Sea level rise at the Paleocene-Eocene transition may have triggered a transformation from a partially shielded platform to a true ring-shaped atoll.
The carbonate platform reaches an overall thickness of 290 metres (950 ft) in one drill core. Drill cores in the platform show variations between individual carbonate layers that imply that parts of the platform were submerged and emerged over time while the platform was still active, possibly because of eustatic sea level variations. Furthermore, the platform was affected by storms which redeposited the carbonatic material. The deposition of the platform lasted about 10 million years, spanning the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Drill core evidence shows that the PETM had little impact on carbonate deposition at Limalok despite a decrease in the δ13C isotope ratio recorded in the carbonates, implying there was little change to ocean pH at that time.
The dominant living beings on Limalok were red algae that occupied many ecological niches and formed rhodoliths. Other lifeforms were bivalves, bryozoans, corals, echinoderms, echinoids, foraminifera, gastropods, molluscs and ostracods. Species and general composition varied over time, leading to different species being found in different parts of the platform. Red algae were important early colonizers, and algal mats and oncoids were contributed by algae and/or cyanobacteria.
### Drowning and post-drowning evolution
A carbonate platform is said to 'drown' when sedimentation can no longer keep up with relative rises in sea level, and carbonate deposition stops. Limalok drowned during the early-middle Eocene, soon after the start of the Lutetian, 48 ± 2 million years ago. It is the most recent carbonate platform in the region to submerge: the similar platform at neighbouring Mili Atoll is still depositing carbonate.
The drownings of carbonate platforms such as Limalok, MIT, Takuyo-Daisan and Wōdejebato appear to have many causes. One is a sea level drop resulting in the emergence of much of the platform; this reduces the space that carbonate-forming organisms have to grow upward when sea levels again rise. A second factor is that these platforms were not true reefs but rather piles of carbonate sediment formed by organisms; these constructs cannot easily out-grow sea level rises when growing on a constrained area. Two final key factors are the passage of the platforms through nutrient-rich equatorial waters which cause the overgrowth of algae that hampered the growth of reef-forming organisms, and global temperature extremes that may overheat the platforms especially when close to the equator; present-day coral bleaching events are often triggered by overheating and Limalok and the other seamounts were all approaching the equator when they drowned. In the case of Limalok and some other guyots, paleolatitude data support the notion that approaching the equator led to the demise of the platforms.
After the platform ceased growing, subsidence quickly lowered the tablemount below the photic zone, where sunlight can still penetrate. Hardgrounds and iron-manganese crusts formed on the drowned platform which contain Oligocene (33.9–23.02 million years ago) sediments and planktonic fossils. Some of the rocks underwent phosphatization during three separate episodes in the Eocene and Eocene–Oligocene which may have been triggered by ocean upwelling events at that time.
Until the Miocene, sedimentation on Limalok was probably hindered by strong currents. Renewed significant sedimentation began at that point after the drowning of Limalok, with sediments consisting mainly of foraminifera and other nanofossils. Some of the sediments were reworked after deposition. At least two layers formed during the Miocene (23.3–5.333 million years ago) and Pliocene–Pleistocene (5.333–0.0117 million years ago), reaching a cumulative thickness of 100–140 metres (330–460 ft). Chemically, most of the sediments are calcite and they often occur in rudstone or wackestone form. Bivalves, echinoderms, foraminifera and ostracods are fossilized in the sediments, which sometimes contain borings and other traces of biological activity.
|
33,247,070 |
Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan
| 1,165,780,306 |
Medieval church in Anglesey, Wales
|
[
"14th-century church buildings in Wales",
"Church in Wales church buildings",
"Church ruins in Wales",
"Grade II* listed churches in Anglesey",
"Grade II* listed ruins in Wales",
"Llanidan",
"Scheduled monuments in Anglesey"
] |
The Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan is a medieval church in the community of Llanidan, in Anglesey, North Wales, close to the Menai Strait. The first church on the site was established in the 7th century by St Nidan, the confessor of the monastery at Penmon, Anglesey, but the oldest parts of the present structure, now closed and partly ruined, date from the 14th century. In about 1500 the church was enlarged by the addition of a second nave on the north side, separated from the earlier nave by an arcade of six arches. During 1839 till 1843 a new church was built nearby to serve the local community, partly due to the cost of repairing the old church. Much of the building was subsequently demolished, leaving only part of the western end and the central arcade. The decision was condemned at the time by Harry Longueville Jones, a clergyman and antiquarian, who lamented the "melancholy fate" of what he called "one of the largest and most important [churches] in the island of Anglesey". Other appreciative comments have been made about the church both before and after its partial demolition.
After that a new church was opened, the old church was used as a chapel for funerals for a period of time. It has been restored by the owners of the adjoining house, Plas Llanidan, and is occasionally open to the public. The remaining parts of the church are a Grade II\* listed building, a national designation given to "particularly important buildings of more than special interest", in particular because St Nidan's is regarded as "a good example of a simple medieval rural church, enriched by 15th-century additions".
In the 12th century, Gerald of Wales said that the church possessed a curious stone carving similar to a thigh that would always return by the next day no matter how far away it was taken. A Norman earl, he recounted, had chained it to a large rock and thrown it into the sea, only for the stone to return to the church by the following morning. A sandstone chest containing bone fragments, possibly are relics of a saint, were found buried beneath the altar. The chest and the church's 13th-century font were relocated to the new church.
## History and location
### Foundation and construction
St Nidan's Church is in the south of Anglesey, Wales, near the village of Brynsiencyn. It is about a quarter of a mile (400 m) from the Menai Strait, which divides the mainland of Wales from the island of Anglesey. The authors of a 2009 guide to the buildings of north-west Wales record the tradition that a church was first established at this site in 616. St Nidan, who founded the church, was associated with St Seiriol's monastery at Penmon, on the eastern tip of Anglesey, and was the monastery's confessor. The area takes its name from the church: the Welsh word llan originally meant "enclosure" and then "church", and "‐idan" is a modified form of the saint's name.
The church and rectory are mentioned in a charter of 1360 as being owned by the priory at Beddgelert, Gwynedd; earlier records have been lost and therefore the date of the priory's acquisition is unknown. As a result, writes the historian Antony Carr, the reason for the "distant community" of Augustinians in Beddgelert possessing Llanidan and three other churches in Anglesey cannot now be discovered. Carr notes that the priory also controlled two churches on the other side of the Menai Strait from Llanidan. Ownership of the church was passed down to Henry VIII at the dissolution of the monasteries in 1535. His successor, Elizabeth I, granted the advowson (the right of a patron to choose the parish priest) and the grounds surrounding St Nidan's, including the estate house called Plas Llanidan, to an Edward Downam and a Peter Ashton; thereafter, in the following centuries, the right and the land passed on through sale, on marriage and by bequest into the hands of the Boston family.
The remaining part of the south nave, the oldest section of the present structure, dates from medieval times; the north doorway and tracery (patterns of stonework in the windows) point to the 14th century. In about 1500, the church was enlarged by the addition of a south porch and a second nave to the north. An arcade (row of arches) was constructed between the two naves. Enlargement by adding a second nave was not as common in Anglesey as elsewhere in Wales. Llanidan is one of three examples on the island; the others are St Beuno's, Aberffraw and St Cwyfan's, Llangwyfan. It is uncertain whether St Nidan's was enlarged because of a growth in the numbers attending the church or because of the generosity of a benefactor.
### Replacement and demolition
A new church, also dedicated to St Nidan, was built to replace the old one between 1839 and 1843. This was because the old church required considerable repair and the growing population in Brynsiencyn needed a church closer to their village. Much of the structure of the old church was demolished in 1844, leaving only the western end (enclosed by a new wall at the east) and the arcade. Some walling was constructed at the east end of the arcade to help support the arches, but it sank because it was apparently built over a grave. In 1913, the tops of the external arches were covered with asphalt and turf in an attempt to make them more weather-proof. One of the voussoirs in the easternmost arch was replaced at the same time due to its poor condition.
Parish worship transferred to the new church, along with some of the fittings. The old church was thereafter used as a mortuary chapel for a time. The churchyard continued to be used for burials until 1902. In modern times, the owners of Plas Llanidan have restored the church, and it is used by them as a private chapel. The churchyard is kept locked, but the church and the gardens of Plas Llanidan are occasionally opened to the public.
The 19th-century clergyman and antiquarian Harry Longueville Jones disputed the need to replace the old church and condemned its "melancholy fate", describing the reasons for its demise as "pretexts". In his view the only part of the church that needed repair was the "ruinous" western end (which had been "badly constructed in the first instance"), yet this part was saved while the "good portions of the building" were destroyed. Furthermore, the cost of the new church was more than double the cost of repairs to the medieval church, which could have "endure[d] for ages to come". He added that it might have been thought to be safe, as it was so close to Lord Boston's house and thus "under the shadow of the lord of the domain", and he condemned the "evil hour" in which "the ruthless hand of the destroyer was allowed to be lifted against it by those whose first duty it was to see that it took no harm". He stated that "when buildings, dedicated to God's service by the piety of former ages, are allowed to be treated in this manner by the constituted authorities of the land ... the institutions to which they are attached cannot be expected to find greater favour at the hands of the fickle and ignorant multitude." He also noted that the new church was only a little larger than its predecessor.
### People associated with the church
The cleric and antiquarian Henry Rowlands, who wrote a history of Anglesey entitled Mona Antiqua Restaurata, was the vicar of St Nidan's from 1696 until his death in 1723. Thomas Williams, a politician and businessman who became wealthy through copper mining in Anglesey, was buried in the churchyard in 1802, but was reburied at St Tegfan's, Llandegfan, in the 1830s. Isaac Jones, a cleric and translator of theological texts, was a curate of Llanidan and other churches in the vicinity from 1840 until his death in 1850. He is buried in the churchyard of St Nidan's. The sculptor John Gibson (1790–1866) was the son of William Gibson, the fourth of his family to serve as the parish clerk at St Nidan's. The Gibson family was associated with the church from the early 18th century onwards; the baptism of Grace, daughter of George Gibson, is recorded in the registers in 1708.
## Architecture and fittings
### Structure
St Nidan's has two naves or aisles divided by a central arcade, and a porch in the south-west corner. It is 38 feet (11.6 m) wide, the northern nave being about 3 feet (0.91 m) wider than the other. Before the church's partial demolition, the church was 78 feet (23.8 m) long and had a chapel, 12 by 19 feet (3.7 by 5.8 m), on the south side. The walls, about 2 feet 10 inches (0.86 m) thick, are built from local rubble masonry with a covering of sandstone. The present wall at the east end was added after the rest of the church was demolished. The western wall has been rebuilt and buttresses added to the south side and north-west corner to help support the structure; Jones thought that they dated from the 16th century. The roof above the remaining western section is made from slates. At the top of the west end of the roof above the south aisle, there is a stone bellcote with two bells.
The south porch contains a water stoup that was said miraculously never to dry up; the water was traditionally regarded as having healing powers. There is a second entrance on the north side through a 15th-century arched doorway decorated with carved human heads. Two verses from Psalm 84 (in Welsh) are written on the wall above the doorway: "For one day in thy Courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of ungodliness." These are the only surviving portions of the Biblical texts that once decorated the internal walls.
The north wall has a window with two lights (sections of window separated by mullions) topped with trefoils (a pattern of three overlapping circles). The two arched east windows, one in each aisle, are decorated with tracery; the southern window reuses some tracery from the 15th century. The demolished southern chapel had a two-light window similar to that at St Peter's, Newborough, which Jones considered to be of "very rude workmanship", and three-light square-headed windows in the east and west walls. Jones also noted the loss of the original window at the end of the northern aisle, which was from the 14th century in his view, and some windows in the north wall "of excellent workmanship". The southern aisle, he said, had had "a small circular headed window, filled up from a pointed one" at the eastern end; the east window "was of a design more remarkable for its singularity than its beauty."
Two of the six arches in the arcade are inside the church; the other four project beyond the east wall, which has been built around one of the octagonal piers that support the arches. The roof dates from the 15th century, although the visible beams are not original; the roof's exposed wooden trusses rest on sandstone corbels. A 1937 survey by the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales and Monmouthshire noted 20 memorials from the 17th and 18th centuries. It also recorded the presence of a sundial on a pedestal, dated 1768, and some stone shields that were not attached to the building, bearing dates of 1561 and 1563. Most of the fittings now in St Nidan's are not original, and come from other churches in north-west Wales; the granite altar is modern.
### Thigh stone and reliquary
The 19th-century antiquarian Angharad Llwyd, who wrote a history of Anglesey in 1833, recorded the story noted by Gerald of Wales in the late 12th century that the church once possessed a stone "resembling a human thigh" which would return "of its own accord" however far away it was carried. It was sometimes known as the "homing stone". Gerald said that Hugh d'Avranches, 1st Earl of Chester (who died in 1101) had tested this story by throwing the stone into the sea, chained to a large rock, only to discover that the stone had returned by the next morning. As a result, the Norman earl issued an order that no-one was to attempt to move it. It was popularly believed that if a couple had sexual intercourse near the stone (something that Gerald said happened "frequently"), it would "sweat large drops of water" and the woman would not become pregnant. Henry Rowlands wrote that the stone had been stolen from the wall of the churchyard (into which it had been set) during his time at St Nidan's.
When Rowlands was vicar of St Nidan's, a small chest was found buried about 2 feet (60 cm) under the altar, containing some bone pieces. His view was that it contained the relics of a saint from St Nidan's or another church in the region (St Beuno's Church, Clynnog Fawr or St Dwynwen's Church, Llanddwyn), and that the chest had placed in St Nidan's during the time of Edward VI for safe keeping. The sandstone reliquary is now kept at the new church, where local tradition maintains that it holds the remains of St Nidan. Jones said that it was "unique, as far as Wales is concerned." The 13th-century font, which Jones described as "a singularly beautiful specimen", was moved to the new church in about 1860.
## Assessment
### Listing
St Nidan's has national recognition and statutory protection from alteration as it is a Grade II\* listed building, the second-highest of the three grades of listing, designating "particularly important buildings of more than special interest". It was given this status on 30 January 1968 and has been listed because it is regarded as "a good example of a simple medieval rural church, enriched by 15th-century additions." Cadw, the Welsh Government body responsible for the built heritage of Wales and the inclusion of Welsh buildings on the statutory lists, also notes that although it was partly demolished in the middle of the 19th century, "what remains can be considered a well preserved and important survival of a double-naved church, retaining many 15th-century features such as the central arcade."
The wall around the churchyard is also a listed building, at Grade II – the lowest of the three grades of listing, designating "buildings of special interest, which warrant every effort being made to preserve them". According to Cadw, the wall probably dates from the 15th century, from around the time that the church was extended.
### Pre-demolition comments
In 1802 the clergyman and antiquarian John Skinner visited Anglesey to see the island's Celtic remains, beginning his tour by rowing across the Menai Strait to land at Llanidan. His view was that the church "seems superior to the generality of Welsh buildings of the kind", with its double roof and two bells, but he also said that "the interior of the building has little to attract notice". Angharad Llwyd described it in 1833 as "a spacious structure, containing several good monuments".
Commenting in 1846 on the church as it had been before demolition started, Harry Longueville Jones said that St Nidan's was "one of the largest and most important [churches] in the island of Anglesey" for its varied architecture, fittings and traditions. He noted the "rather curious" position of the church, in a "nearly circular enclosure" with tall trees around it, and said that "the effect of the western end with the porch, overgrown by an enormous quantity of ivy, was picturesque in the extreme".
### Post-demolition comments
The Welsh politician and church historian Sir Stephen Glynne visited the church in 1850. He said that St Nidan's, which he described as "now abandoned and in great measure ruinated", was "a larger and better structure than most of the Anglesey churches." At the time he saw it, the walls were still largely in place but the only roofed section was the western end; he commented that most of the church was "open to the skies."
The historian and clergyman Edmund Tyrrell Green, writing a survey of Anglesey church architecture and contents in 1929, described the arcade as "good" and some of the tracery in the windows as "very good". His view was that the "excellence of the work" at St Nidan's was because of its link with Beddgelert Priory.
The authors of a 1990 book about the lost churches of Wales said that St Nidan's was "now an evocative shell decorously mantled with ivy and enclosed by an overgrown graveyard". They described it as "a dark, dusty and empty place", but said that the "elegant" arcade "rises from the graveyard like an abstract sculpture." The quality of the stone carving of the doors and windows, they said, was evidence of "the vanished splendour of Llanidan."
A 2002 book about Welsh churchyards comments that "a pilgrimage undertaken to this churchyard is rewarding", since there is "little to distract and much to suggest the quiet years of Nidan's ministry in this secluded spot." Noting how the site can be reached from the Menai Strait yet remains hidden from it, the author added that "some stillness still remains in secret places like Llanidan." A 2005 guide to Wales said that "the romantic yew-encircled ruin" of St Nidan's "should not be missed."
|
250,016 |
London Necropolis Company
| 1,168,139,632 |
Cemetery operator established in 1852
|
[
"1852 establishments in England",
"1959 disestablishments in England",
"Anglican cemeteries in the United Kingdom",
"Cemeteries in London",
"Companies established in 1852",
"Defunct companies based in London",
"London Necropolis Company",
"Woking"
] |
The London Necropolis Company (LNC), formally the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company until 1927, was a cemetery operator established by Act of Parliament in 1852 in reaction to the crisis caused by the closure of London's graveyards in 1851. The LNC intended to establish a single cemetery large enough to accommodate all of London's future burials in perpetuity. The company's founders recognised that the recently invented technology of the railway provided the ability to conduct burials a long distance from populated areas, mitigating concerns over public health risks from living near burial sites. Accordingly, the company bought a very large tract of land in Brookwood, Surrey, around 25 miles (40 km) from London, and converted a portion of it into Brookwood Cemetery. A dedicated railway line, the London Necropolis Railway, linked the new cemetery to the city.
Financial mismanagement and internal disputes led to delays in the project. By the time Brookwood Cemetery opened in late 1854, a number of other cemeteries had opened nearer to London or were in the process of opening. While some parishes in London did arrange for the LNC to handle the burials of their dead, many preferred to use nearer cemeteries. The LNC had anticipated handling between 10,000 and 50,000 burials per year, but the number never rose above 4,100 per year, and in its first 150 years of operations only 231,730 burials had been conducted. Buying the land for Brookwood Cemetery and building the cemetery and railway had been very expensive, and by the time the cemetery opened the LNC was already on the verge of bankruptcy. The LNC remained solvent by selling surplus parts of its land, but as the land had been chosen in the first place for its remoteness, sales were low.
From the 1880s the LNC began a more aggressive programme to maximise its income. The process for the sale of surplus land was improved, resulting in increased income. The LNC redeveloped its lands at Hook Heath, Woking into housing and a golf course, creating a new suburb of Woking and providing a steady income from rentals. After an 1884 ruling that cremation was lawful in England the LNC also took advantage of its proximity to Woking Crematorium by providing transport for bodies and mourners on its railway line and after 1910 by interring ashes in a dedicated columbarium. The LNC also provided the land for a number of significant military cemeteries and memorials at Brookwood after both World Wars. In 1941 London Necropolis railway station, the LNC's London railway terminus, was badly damaged by bombing, and the London Necropolis Railway was abandoned.
Rising property prices in Surrey in the 1940s and 1950s made the LNC increasingly valuable, but also made it a target for property speculators. In 1959 a hostile takeover succeeded, and LNC's independence came to an end. From 1959 to 1985 a succession of owners stripped the profitable parts of the business from the company, leaving a rump residual company operating the increasingly derelict cemetery. In 1985 what remained of the company came into the ownership of Ramadan Güney, who set about reviving what remained. Links were formed with London's Muslim communities in an effort to encourage new burials, and a slow programme of clearing and restoring the derelict sections of the cemetery commenced. Although it was never as successful as planned, the LNC was very influential in both the funeral industry and in the development of the area around Woking, and Brookwood Cemetery remains the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom.
## Background
Since the conversion of London to Christianity in the early 7th century, the city's dead had been buried in and around the local churches. With a limited amount of space for burials, the oldest graves were regularly exhumed to free space for new burials, and the remains of the previous occupants transferred to charnel houses for storage. From the 14th century onwards the charnel houses themselves were overwhelmed, and exhumed bones were scattered where they had been dug up or reburied in pits. Despite this practice, by the mid 17th century the city was running seriously short of burial space. A proposal by Christopher Wren to use the reconstruction following the 1666 Great Fire of London as an opportunity to cease burials in the churchyards and establish new cemeteries outside the city was approved by the King and Parliament but vetoed by the Corporation of London, and burials continued at the newly rebuilt churches.
In the first half of the 19th century the population of London more than doubled, from a little under a million people in 1801 to almost two and a half million in 1851. Despite this rapid growth in population, the amount of land set aside for use as graveyards remained unchanged at approximately 300 acres (0.47 sq mi; 1.2 km<sup>2</sup>), spread across around 200 small sites. The difficulty of digging without disturbing existing graves led to bodies often simply being stacked on top of each other to fit the available space and covered with a layer of earth. In more crowded areas even relatively fresh graves had to be exhumed to free up space for new burials, their contents being unearthed and scattered to free up space. In some cases large pits were dug on existing burial grounds, unearthing the previous burials, and fresh corpses crammed into the available space. Intact material from burials was sold on a thriving market in second hand coffin furniture, coffin wood was burned as household fuel, and exhumed bones were shipped in bulk to the north of England to be sold as fertiliser. Decaying corpses contaminated the water supply and the city suffered regular epidemics of cholera, smallpox, measles and typhoid; in 1842 the mean working life of a London professional man was 30 years and of a London labourer just 17 years.
Public health policy at this time was shaped by the miasma theory (the belief that airborne particles released by decaying flesh were the primary factor in the spread of contagious illness), and the bad smells and risks of disease caused by piled bodies and exhumed rotting corpses caused great public concern. A Royal Commission established in 1842 to investigate the problem concluded that London's burial grounds had become so overcrowded that it was impossible to dig a new grave without cutting through an existing one. Commissioner and sanitation campaigner Edwin Chadwick testified that each year, 20,000 adults and 30,000 children were being buried in less than 218 acres (0.34 sq mi; 0.88 km<sup>2</sup>) of already full burial grounds; the Commission heard that one cemetery, Spa Fields in Clerkenwell, designed to hold 1,000 bodies, contained 80,000 graves, and that gravediggers throughout London were obliged to shred bodies in order to cram the remains into available grave space. In 1848–49 a cholera epidemic killed 14,601 people in London and overwhelmed the burial system completely. Bodies were left stacked in heaps awaiting burial, and even relatively recent graves were exhumed to make way for new burials.
### Proposed solutions to the burial crisis
In the wake of public concerns following the cholera epidemic and the findings of the Royal Commission, the Act to Amend the Laws Concerning the Burial of the Dead in the Metropolis 1851 (Burials Act) was passed in 1851. Under the Burials Act, new burials were prohibited in what were then the built-up areas of London. Seven large cemeteries had recently opened a short distance from London or were in the process of opening, and temporarily became London's main burial grounds. A proposal by Francis Seymour Haden to ship the bodies of London's dead to the Thames Estuary for use in land reclamation met with little approval, and the government sought alternative means to prevent the constantly increasing number of deaths in London from overwhelming the new cemeteries in the same manner in which it had overwhelmed the traditional burial grounds.
The new suburban cemeteries had a combined size of just 282 acres (0.44 sq mi; 1.1 km<sup>2</sup>), and the Board of Health did not consider any of them suitable for long-term use. As a long term solution to the crisis, Edwin Chadwick proposed the closure of all existing burial grounds in the vicinity of London other than the privately owned Kensal Green Cemetery in west London. Kensal Green Cemetery was to be nationalised and greatly enlarged to provide a single burial ground for west London. A large tract of land on the Thames around 9 miles (14 km) southeast of London in Abbey Wood (on the site of present-day Thamesmead) was to become a single burial ground for east London. All bodies would be shipped by river and canal to the new cemeteries, bringing an end to burials in London itself.
The Treasury was sceptical that Chadwick's scheme would ever be financially viable. It also met with widespread public concerns about the impact of monopoly control of the burial industry, and about the government taking control of an industry previously controlled by religious bodies and private entrepreneurs. The process of decomposition was still poorly understood and it was generally believed that 12⁄13 (92%) of a decaying corpse is dispersed as gas; local authorities in the vicinity of the proposed new cemeteries were horrified at the prospect of an estimated 3,000,000 cubic feet (85,000 m<sup>3</sup>) per year of miasma (disease-carrying vapour) spreading from the cemeteries across surrounding areas. Although the Metropolitan Interments Act 1850 authorised Chadwick's scheme to proceed, the Metropolitan Interment Amendment Act 1852 repealed the authorisation.
## Richard Broun and Richard Sprye
> An area of ground so distant as to be beyond any possible future extension of the Capital, sufficiently large to allow of its sub-division, not only into spacious distinct portions for the burial of each sect of the Christian Public, but also, if desired and deemed expedient, into as many separate compartments as there are parishes within London and its suburbs ... [and] a Mausoleum Church, with funeral chapels, private mausolea, vaults, and catacombs, large enough to contain, not only the thousands of coffins now lying within our numerous Metropolitan Churches, but also the coffins of all such dying in London, in this and future generations ... [A] grand and befitting gathering place for the metropolitan mortality of a mighty nation; a last home and bed of rest where the ashes of the high and low, the mighty and the weak, the learned and the ignorant, the wicked and the good, the idle and the industrious, in one vast co-mingled heap may repose together.
While the negotiations over the state taking control of burials were ongoing, an alternative proposal was being drawn up by Richard Broun and Richard Sprye. Broun and Sprye intended to use the emerging technology of mechanised land transport to provide a final solution to the problem of London's dead. They envisaged buying a single very large tract of land around 23 miles (37 km) from London in Brookwood near Woking, Surrey, to be called Brookwood Cemetery or the London Necropolis. At this distance, the land would be far beyond the maximum projected size of the city's growth, greatly reducing any potential hazards from miasma. In the 18th century this land had been nicknamed "the Waste of Woking", and with poor quality gravel soil it was of little use in farming and thus available very cheaply. The London and South Western Railway (LSWR)—which had connected London to Woking in 1838—would enable bodies and mourners to be shipped from London to the site easily and cheaply. Broun envisaged dedicated coffin trains, each carrying 50–60 bodies, travelling from London to the new Necropolis in the early morning or late at night, and the coffins being stored on the cemetery site until the time of the funeral. Mourners would then be carried to the appropriate part of the cemetery by a dedicated passenger train during the day.
Broun calculated that a 1,500-acre (2.3 sq mi; 6.1 km<sup>2</sup>) site would accommodate a total of 5,830,500 individual graves in a single layer. The legislation authorising Brookwood Cemetery did not permit mass graves at the site, and burials were restricted to one family per grave. If the practice of only burying a single family in each grave were abandoned and the traditional practice for pauper burials of ten burials per grave were adopted, the site was capable of accommodating 28,500,000 bodies. Assuming 50,000 deaths per year and presuming that families would often choose to share a grave, Broun calculated that even with the prohibition of mass graves it would take over 350 years to fill a single layer of the cemetery. Although the Brookwood site was a long distance from London, Broun and Sprye argued that the railway made it both quicker and cheaper to reach than the seven existing cemeteries, all of which required a slow and expensive horse-drawn hearse to carry the body and mourners from London to the burial site.
### Opposition
Shareholders in the LSWR were concerned at the impact the cemetery scheme would have on the normal operations of the railway. At a shareholders' meeting in August 1852 concerns were raised about the impact of funeral trains on normal traffic and of the secrecy in which negotiations between the LSWR and the promoters of the cemetery were conducted. The LSWR management pledged that no concessions would be made to the cemetery operators, other than promising them the use of one train each day. Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London was hostile in general to railway funeral schemes, arguing that the noise and speed of the railways was incompatible with the solemnity of the Christian burial service. Blomfield also considered it inappropriate that the families of people from very different backgrounds would potentially have to share a train, and felt that it demeaned the dignity of the deceased for the bodies of respectable members of the community to be carried on a train also carrying the bodies and relatives of those who had led immoral lives. Meanwhile, Henry Drummond, Member of Parliament for the West Surrey constituency which covered the Brookwood site, James Mangles, MP for the nearby constituency of Guildford, and labour reform campaigner Lord Ashley (later Lord Shaftesbury) lobbied against the proposal. Drummond considered the scheme a front for land speculation, believing that the promoters only intended to use 400 acres (0.63 sq mi; 1.6 km<sup>2</sup>) for the cemetery and to develop the remaining 80% for building; Mangles felt that the people of Woking were not being fairly compensated for the loss of their historic rights to use the common lands; Ashley felt that the Metropolitan Interments Act 1850 had been a victory for the campaign to end private profiteering from death and that the new scheme would reverse these gains, and was also concerned about the health implications of diseased bodies being transported to and stored at the London terminus in large numbers while awaiting trains to Brookwood.
## Formation of the London Necropolis Company
Despite the opposition, on 30 June 1852 the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Act 1852 was passed, giving the Brookwood scheme Parliamentary consent to proceed. The former Woking Common at Brookwood, owned by the Earl of Onslow, was chosen as the site for the new cemetery. To prevent the LSWR from exploiting its monopoly on access to the cemetery, the private Act of Parliament authorising the scheme bound the LSWR to carry corpses and mourners to the cemetery in perpetuity and set a maximum tariff which could be levied on funeral traffic, but did not specify details of how the funeral trains were to operate.
By this time, Broun and Sprye had lost control of the scheme. On 1 April 1851 a group of trustees led by Poor Law Commissioner William Voules purchased the rights to the scheme from Broun and Sprye for £20,000 (about £ in terms of 2023 consumer spending power) and, once the Act of Parliament had been passed, founded the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company on their own without regard to their agreement with the original promoters. These trustees proved inept, wasting large sums of money; meanwhile Richard Broun lobbied vigorously against the "misrepresentations and ambiguous assertions" of the new trustees. With financiers sceptical of the scheme's viability Voules and his trustees were unable to raise the funds to buy the proposed site from Lord Onslow. In early 1853, amid widespread allegations of voting irregularities and with the company unable to pay promised dividends, a number of the directors resigned, including Voules, and the remaining public confidence in the scheme collapsed.
Broun's scheme had envisaged the cemetery running along both sides of the LSWR main line and divided by religion, with separate private railway halts on the main line, each incorporating a chapel, to serve each religion's section. The new consulting engineer to the company, William Cubitt, rejected this idea and recommended a single site to the south of the railway line, served by a private branch line through the cemetery. The company also considered Broun's plan for dedicated coffin trains unrealistic, arguing that relatives would not want the coffins to be shipped separately from the deceased's family.
## Brookwood Cemetery
In September 1853 a Committee of Enquiry into the mismanagement of the company recommended the expulsion of the four remaining trustees and the reform of the company under a new board of directors. This was unanimously approved by the shareholders, and work finally began on the scheme. A 2,200-acre (3.4 sq mi; 8.9 km<sup>2</sup>) tract of land stretching from Woking to Brookwood was purchased from Lord Onslow. The westernmost 400 acres (0.62 sq mi; 1.6 km<sup>2</sup>), at the Brookwood end, were designated the initial cemetery site, and a branch railway line was built from the LSWR main line into this section. A plot of land between Westminster Bridge Road and York Street (now Leake Street) was chosen as the site for the London railway terminus. Architect William Tite and engineer William Cubitt drew up a design for a station, which was approved in June 1854, and completed in October 1854. In July 1854 work began on the drainage of the marshlands designated as the initial cemetery site, and on the construction of the embankment carrying the railway branch into the cemetery.
With the ambition to become London's sole burial site in perpetuity, the LNC were aware that if their plans were successful, their Necropolis would become a site of major national importance. As a consequence, the cemetery was designed with attractiveness in mind, in contrast to the squalid and congested London burial grounds and the newer suburban cemeteries which were already becoming crowded. The LNC aimed to create an atmosphere of perpetual spring in the cemetery, and chose the plants for the cemetery accordingly. It had already been noted that evergreen plants from North America thrived in the local soil. Robert Donald, the owner of an arboretum near Woking, was contracted to supply the trees and shrubs for the cemetery. The railway line through the cemetery and the major roads and paths within the cemetery were lined with giant sequoia trees, the first significant planting of these trees (only introduced to Europe in 1853) in Britain. As well as the giant sequoias, the grounds were heavily planted with magnolia, rhododendron, coastal redwood, azalea, andromeda and monkeypuzzle, with the intention of creating perpetual greenery with large numbers of flowers and a strong floral scent throughout the cemetery.
On 7 November 1854 the new cemetery opened and the southern Anglican section was consecrated by Charles Sumner, Bishop of Winchester. At the time it was the largest cemetery in the world. On 13 November the first scheduled train left the new London Necropolis railway station for the cemetery, and the first burial (that of the stillborn twins of a Mr and Mrs Hore of Ewer Street, Borough) took place.
> A very few years ago, the idea of founding a cemetery for the metropolis which should be more than 20 miles distant from it would have been looked upon as an absurdity. Yesterday, however, saw the practical embodiment of this idea ... A short distance beyond the Woking station, the country, without varying from its general character of sterility and hardness of outline, becomes gently undulating and offers features which, with some assistance from art, might be made more than pleasing. Here is the London Necropolis, which certainly throws into the shade any previous attempts at extramural interments.It was fitting enough that the largest city in the world should have, as it will now have, the largest cemetery in the world.
## Cemetery railway line
As the Brookwood site had been intentionally chosen for its distance from London, at the time of its opening the only practical way to reach the cemetery was by railway. William Cubitt decided the terrain of the initial cemetery site was best suited to a railway branch from the LSWR at the west of the cemetery, and work began on the earthworks and rails for the new branch in early September 1854. The single-track branch was completed in time for the opening two months later. The junction with the LSWR, known as Necropolis Junction, was west-facing, meaning that trains to and from London were obliged to reverse in and out of the branch to the two stations in the cemetery. The poor quality gravel soil, which had been the initial reason for the site's cheapness and its selection as the site for the cemetery, was poorly suited as a railway trackbed. The rails, and in particular the sleepers, deteriorated rapidly and needed constantly to be replaced.
### London rail stations
A site for the London terminus near Waterloo had been suggested by Richard Broun. Its proximity to the Thames meant that bodies could be cheaply transported to the terminus by water from much of London, while being situated near three major Thames bridges the area was easily accessed from both north and south of the river. The arches of the huge brick viaduct carrying the LSWR into Waterloo Bridge station (now London Waterloo station) were easily converted into mortuaries. Broun also felt that the journey out of London from Waterloo Bridge would be less distressing for mourners; while most of the rail routes out of London ran through tunnels and deep cuttings or through densely populated areas, at this time the urban development of what is now south London had not taken place and the LSWR route ran almost entirely through parkland and countryside. In March 1854 the LNC purchased a plot of land between Westminster Bridge Road and York Street (now Leake Street). Architect William Tite and engineer William Cubitt drew up a design for a station, which was approved in June 1854 and completed in October of that year.
As the station abutted the arches of the LSWR's viaduct, it acted as an obstacle to any increase in the number of lines serving Waterloo station (renamed from Waterloo Bridge station in 1886). Urban growth in the area of what is now south west London, through which trains from Waterloo ran, led to congestion at the station and in 1896 the LSWR formally presented the LNC with a proposal to provide the LNC with a new station in return for the existing station. The LNC agreed to the proposals, in return for the LSWR granting the LNC control of the design of the new station and leasing the new station to the LNC for a token rent in perpetuity, providing new rolling stock, removing any limit on the number of passengers using the Necropolis service, and providing the free carriage of machinery and equipment to be used in the cemetery. Although the LSWR was extremely unhappy at what they considered excessive demands, in May 1899 the companies signed an agreement, in which the LSWR gave in to every LNC demand. In addition the LSWR paid £12,000 compensation (about £ in terms of 2023 consumer spending power) for the inconvenience of relocating the LNC station and offices, and agreed that mourners returning from the cemetery could travel on any LSWR train to Waterloo, Vauxhall or Clapham Junction. A site for the replacement terminus was bought by the LSWR in 1899, south of the existing site and on the opposite side of Westminster Bridge Road. The new station was completed on 8 February 1902, and the LSWR viaduct was widened to serve a greatly enlarged Waterloo station, destroying all traces of the original LNC terminus.
### Cemetery rail stations
The two stations in the cemetery were very similar in design. North station served the Nonconformist section of the cemetery, and South station served the Anglican section. On William Cubitt's advice the two stations in the cemetery were built as temporary structures, in the expectation that they would need to be rebuilt once the railway was operational and the issues with operating a railway of this unique nature became clearer. Other than brick platform faces, chimneys and foundations, the stations were built entirely of wood. Each station held first class and ordinary reception rooms for mourners, a first class and an ordinary refreshment room, and a set of apartments for LNC staff. To provide an attractive first view of the cemetery for visitors arriving at the stations, the areas around the stations and their associated chapels were planted with groves of bay, Cedar of Lebanon, rhododendron and Portuguese laurel.
At the time the cemetery opened, the nearest railway station other than those on the cemetery branch was Woking railway station, 4 miles (6.4 km) away. As only one train per day ran from London to the cemetery stations and back, and even that ran only when funerals were due to take place, access to the cemetery was difficult for mourners and LNC staff. Although in the negotiations leading to the creation of the cemetery the LSWR had told the LNC that they planned to build a main line station near the cemetery, they had not done so. On 1 June 1864 the LSWR finally opened Brookwood railway station on their main line, immediately adjacent to the cemetery. A substantial commuter village grew around the northern (i.e. non-cemetery) side of the new station.
## Burials
> As the corpses brought to either of the reception-houses by the funeral tender are now taken each one its separate way, followed by its mourning-group, and by paths where privacy is unbroken, and none but soothing and religious influences around,—when amidst this scene, the clergyman or minister, unharassed by other duties, reads reverently the prayers for the dead,—when all which is this taking place tends to raise the dignity and self-respect of human nature, and create a sublime ideal of the great mystery of the grave, we perceive by contrast, more and more, what the evils of city and suburban burials have been, and what an educative process lies within even this portional one of their reformation ...
>
> Hither the wealthy and respectable are removing the remains of relatives from the graves and vaults of the metropolis, and hither the Nonconformists are bringing the long-interred dead from even the once-sacred place of Bunhill Fields ... but it is a law that moral and social advantages permeate as surely down through the strata of society as water finds its level. In spite of little knowledge, in spite of ignorant opposition from those interested in a different state of things, the middle and working classes of the metropolis will not be slow in perceiving the advantages of extramural burial, conjointly with a management that frees them from extortion ...
>
> To merely provide decency of sepulchre was not, and is not, all. [The LNC] perceived that if it was to work out with any efficiency the problem of extramural burial, it must be its own undertaker, and provide a reception-house, as well as railway transit. This it has done accordingly.
The London Necropolis Company offered three classes of funerals:
- A first class funeral allowed its buyer to select the grave site of their choice anywhere in the cemetery; at the time of opening prices began at £2 10s (about £ in 2023 terms) for a basic 9-by-4-foot (2.7 m × 1.2 m) with no special coffin specifications. It was expected by the LNC that those using first class graves would erect a permanent memorial of some kind in due course following the funeral.
- Second class funerals cost £1 (about £ in 2023 terms) and allowed some control over the burial location. The right to erect a permanent memorial cost an additional 10 shillings (about £ in 2023 terms); if a permanent memorial was not erected the LNC reserved the right to re-use the grave in future.
- Third class funerals were reserved for pauper funerals; those buried at parish expense in the section of the cemetery designated for that parish. Although the LNC was forbidden from using mass graves (other than the burial of next of kin in the same grave) and thus even the lowest class of funeral provided a separate grave for the deceased, third class funerals were not granted the right to erect a permanent memorial on the site. (The families of those buried could pay afterwards to upgrade a third class grave to a higher class if they later wanted to erect a memorial, but this practice was rare.) Despite this, Brookwood's pauper graves granted more dignity to the deceased than did other graveyards and cemeteries of the period, all of which other than Brookwood continued the practice of mass graves for the poor.
Brookwood was one of the few cemeteries to permit burials on Sundays, which made it a popular choice with the poor as it allowed people to attend funerals without the need to take a day off work. As theatrical performances were banned on Sundays at this time, it also made Brookwood a popular choice for the burial of actors for the same reason, to the extent that actors were provided with a dedicated section of the cemetery near the station entrance.
While the majority of burials conducted by the LNC (around 80%) were pauper funerals on behalf of London parishes, the LNC also reached agreement with a number of societies, guilds, religious bodies and similar organisations. The LNC provided dedicated sections of the cemetery for these groups, on the basis that those who had lived or worked together in life could remain together after death. Although the LNC was never able to gain the domination of London's funeral industry for which its founders had hoped, it was very successful at targeting specialist groups of artisans and trades, to the extent that it became nicknamed "the Westminster Abbey of the middle classes". A large number of these dedicated plots were established, ranging from Chelsea Pensioners and the Ancient Order of Foresters to the Corps of Commissionaires and the LSWR. The Nonconformist cemetery also includes a Parsee burial ground established in 1862, which remains the only Zoroastrian burial ground in Europe. Dedicated sections in the Anglican cemetery were also reserved for burials from those parishes which had made burial arrangements with the LNC.
Immediately after its foundation the LNC used existing firms of London undertakers to arrange funerals, but over time took over all aspects of the arrangements from coffin-making to masonry. LNC funerals were intentionally kept as similar as possible to those of traditional undertakers, with the exception that a railway carriage was used in place of a hearse. On being commissioned to provide a funeral, invitations would be sent out either by the deceased's family or from the LNC offices. These letters specified the waiting room to be used, the time of the train to Brookwood, and the expected return time to London. If the funeral was to be held in London, a traditional hearse and carriage would take the deceased to their parish church for the service, and then on to the London railway terminus; if the funeral was to take place in the terminus or in Brookwood, the procession would come directly to the terminus.
### Funerals
On arrival at the terminus the mourners would be led either to one of the dedicated first class waiting rooms (for first and second class funerals) or to the communal third class waiting room. The coffin would be discreetly unloaded from the hearse and sent to the platform level by lift. Those attending first and second class funerals would be permitted to watch the coffins being loaded onto the train if they so wished. (After the relocation to the new London terminus in 1902, some funeral services would be held in a Chapelle Ardente on platform level, for those cases where mourners were unable to make the journey to Brookwood.) Each door of the waiting train would be labelled with the name of the deceased, to ensure all passengers travelled with the correct funeral party; the names of the deceased being carried on the train would be called in turn, and that person's mourners would board the train.
At the time the service was inaugurated, the LNC's trains were divided both by class and by religion, with separate Anglican and Nonconformist sections of the train. This distinction applied to both living and deceased passengers. Intended to prevent persons from different social background from mixing and potentially distressing mourners and to prevent bodies of persons from different social classes being carried in the same compartment rather than to provide different facilities, the carriages intended for all classes and religions were very similar in design, and the primary difference was different ornamentation on the compartment doors.
At 11.35 am (11.20 am on Sundays) the train would leave London for Brookwood, arriving at Necropolis Junction at 12.25 pm (12.20 pm on Sundays).
On arrival at North or South station coffins would usually be unloaded onto a hand-drawn bier and pulled by LNC staff to the appropriate chapel. While this was taking place the mourners were escorted to the waiting rooms at the station. On arrival at the chapels first and second class funerals would generally have a brief service (third class funerals had a single service in the appropriate chapel for all those being buried). For those burials where the funeral service had already been held at either a parish church or the LNC's London terminus the coffins would be taken directly from the train to the grave.
The return trains to London generally left South station at 2.15 pm and Necropolis Junction at 2.30 pm; the return journey initially took around an hour owing to the need to stop to refill the engine with water, but following the construction of the water tower in the cemetery this fell to around 40 minutes. An 1854 agreement between the LNC and LSWR gave consent for the LNC to operate two or three funeral trains each day if demand warranted it, but traffic levels never rose to a sufficient level to activate this clause.
The train ran only if there was a coffin or passengers at the London terminus waiting to use it, and both the journey from London to Brookwood and the later return would be cancelled if nobody was due to leave London that morning. It would not run if there was only a single third or second class coffin to be carried, and in these cases the coffin and funeral party would be held until the next service. Generally the trains ran direct from London to the cemetery, other than occasional stops to take on water. Between 1890 and 1910 the trains also sometimes stopped at Vauxhall and Clapham Junction for the benefit of mourners from south west London who did not want to travel via Waterloo, but these intermediate stops were discontinued and never reinstated. After 1 October 1900 the Sunday trains were discontinued, and from 1902 the daily train service was ended and trains ran only as required. On some occasions where there were very large numbers of mourners the LSWR would provide special passenger trains from Waterloo to their own station at Brookwood to carry additional mourners to the vicinity of the cemetery.
As well as intending to conduct those burials which would previously have taken place in London's now-closed graveyards, the LNC also envisaged the physical relocation of the closed burial grounds to their Necropolis, to provide a final solution to the problems caused by burials in built-up areas. The massive London civil engineering projects of the mid-19th century—the railways, the sewer system and from the 1860s the precursors to the London Underground—often necessitated the demolition of existing churchyards. The first major relocation took place in 1862, when the construction of Charing Cross railway station and the routes into it necessitated the demolition of the burial ground of Cure's College in Southwark. Around 5,000 cubic yards (3,800 m<sup>3</sup>) of earth was displaced, uncovering at least 7,950 bodies. These were packed into 220 large containers, each containing 26 adults plus children, and shipped on the London Necropolis Railway to Brookwood for reburial, along with at least some of the existing headstones from the cemetery, at a cost of around 3 shillings per body. At least 21 London burial grounds were relocated to Brookwood via the railway, along with numerous others relocated by road following the railway's closure. The LNC's exhumation and relocation business, split from the LNC in 1973 and renamed "Necropolis", continued to operate until 2002.
## Developments and difficulties
The success of the LNC relied on taking over all, or at least a significant portion, of the burials of London's dead. However, while the Metropolitan Interment Amendment Act 1852 had repealed Chadwick's scheme for two very large cemeteries near London, it had also permitted London's parishes to make their own arrangements for the burial of their dead. Each parish could make arrangements with the cemetery of its choosing, or use money from the rates to create their own cemeteries. The financial mismanagement and internal disputes within the LNC had delayed the opening of Brookwood Cemetery by 18 months, and during this period new cemeteries nearer London had opened or were nearing completion. While some parishes did choose Brookwood as their burial site, many preferred either to make arrangements with less distant cemeteries, or to buy land on the outskirts of London and open their own suburban cemeteries. Concerns over the financial irregularities and the viability of the scheme had led to only 15,000 of the 25,000 LNC shares being sold, severely limiting the company's working capital and forcing it to take out large loans. Buying the land from Lord Onslow, compensating local residents for the loss of rights over Woking Common, draining and landscaping the portion to be used for the initial cemetery, and building the railway lines and stations were all expensive undertakings. With far fewer burial contracts with London parishes than had been anticipated, by the time Brookwood Cemetery opened in November 1854 the LNC was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Recognising their financial predicament, the LNC lobbied Parliament for a new Act of Parliament to allow the venture to survive. On 23 July 1855 the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Amendment Act 1855 received Royal Assent. This Act released the LNC from those compulsory purchases of land which had been mandated by the 1852 Act but had not yet been completed, easing the immediate financial burden. It also allowed a ten-year window for the LNC to sell certain parts of the land bought from Lord Onslow which were not required for the cemetery, to provide a source of income.
Although the 1855 Act permitted the LNC to sell land, this proved difficult. Of the 2,200-acre (3.4 sq mi; 8.9 km<sup>2</sup>) site, around 700 acres (1.1 sq mi; 2.8 km<sup>2</sup>) were occupied by the initial Necropolis site and the adjacent reserve site, and a further 200 acres (0.31 sq mi; 0.81 km<sup>2</sup>) retained their common land rights and could not be developed in any way, rendering them worthless to prospective buyers. While this left 1,300 acres (2.0 sq mi; 5.3 km<sup>2</sup>) theoretically able to be sold, the Brookwood site had been chosen for its remoteness and there were few prospective buyers. While 214 acres (0.33 sq mi; 0.87 km<sup>2</sup>) were bought by the government as sites for prisons and a lunatic asylum, the LNC struggled to sell the remainder. By the time the ten-year window for land sales expired in 1865, only 346 acres (0.54 sq mi; 1.4 km<sup>2</sup>) had been sold.
With the majority of the surplus lands still unsold, as the ten-year window expired the LNC successfully petitioned for a further five-year extension. The LNC was by this time in serious financial difficulties, and dependent on loans from its own directors to settle outstanding debts. The business had been established on the basis that the cemetery would handle between 10,000 and 50,000 burials per year, but the number never exceeded 4,100 and over its first 20 years of operations averaged just 3,200. As the five-year extension expired the financial difficulties remained, and under pressure from shareholders the London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Amendment Act 1869 was passed. This removed all restrictions on land sales, other than within the existing cemetery and the adjacent reserve site. Despite the releasing of restrictions in the 1869 Act, land sales remained disappointing. By 1887 less than half the surplus land had been sold, much of it at very low prices.
### Cremation
In 1878 the Cremation Society of Great Britain bought an isolated piece of the LNC's Brookwood land and built Woking Crematorium on the site. The crematorium was completed in 1879 but Richard Cross, the Home Secretary, bowed to strong protests from local residents and threatened to prosecute if any cremations were conducted. As a consequence the crematorium was not used other than for the experimental incineration of livestock. The 1884 trial of William Price established that human cremation was not unlawful in England, and on 26 March 1885 the first human cremation took place at Woking. Although the LNC was hostile to the idea of cremation, Woking Crematorium was the only operational crematorium in the country. Since the Necropolis Railway provided the easiest way to transport bodies and mourners from London to the Woking area, transport to and from Woking Crematorium soon began to provide a significant source of revenue for the LNC.
Cremation remained unusual and very expensive; the cost of a cremation at Woking was £6, not including transport and funeral costs, more than twice the £2 10s cost of a first class burial at Brookwood. By 1891 only 177 people had been cremated at Woking. Cyril Tubbs recognised that a potential increase in cremations once the practice became accepted represented an opportunity for the LNC. In July 1891 he proposed that the LNC build its own crematorium and columbarium (building for the storage of cremated remains) within the cemetery, with the ultimate goal of taking over all funeral arrangements for the Cremation Society. The Cremation Society were keen to prevent a competitor to Woking Crematorium, and sought to cooperate with the LNC. The fares for the transport of mourners and coffins on the London Necropolis Railway had been fixed by Parliament in 1852 at 6s for a living first class passenger and £1 for a first class coffin (in 1891 worth about £ and £ respectively in 2023 consumer terms). Rival firms of undertakers were not permitted to use the LNC's trains to Brookwood Cemetery and had to pay the much more expensive LSWR fares to transport coffins and mourners from Waterloo to Woking, giving the LNC a significant advantage in carriage to the crematorium. While the LNC never built its own crematorium, in 1910 Lord Cadogan decided he no longer wanted to be interred in the mausoleum he had commissioned at Brookwood. This building, the largest mausoleum in the cemetery, was bought by the LNC, fitted with shelves and niches to hold urns, and used as a dedicated columbarium from then on.
### Cyril Tubbs
In December 1887 the LNC appointed Cyril Tubbs to supervise the LNC estate. Tubbs was given a broad remit to "advance the company's interests", including buying and selling land, supervising the railway stations, advertising the cemetery and liaising with the LSWR. Tubbs set about restructuring the design of Brookwood Cemetery to make it more appealing to mourners and visitors. The cemetery was divided into numbered sections, separated by an expanded network of avenues. These avenues were all named, and signposts were erected along them, to allow visitors easily to find their way around the sprawling Brookwood site, and to locate particular graves; the naming and numbering system devised by Tubbs has remained in use ever since.
Tubbs established a masonry works and showroom near the centre of the cemetery, allowing the LNC to provide grave markers without the difficulty of shipping them from London, and opened a LNC-owned nursery in the grounds for the sale of plants and wreaths. This increased the practice of mourners planting flowers and shrubs around graves, which was in turn used by the LNC in their promotional material to promote Brookwood as a "Garden of Sleep". In around 1904 the masonry works was expanded and equipped with a siding from the railway branch line, allowing the LNC to sell its gravestones and funerary art to cemeteries nationwide.
Tubbs also oversaw a restructuring of the ailing programme to sell the LNC's surplus lands. The estate was partitioned into three sections, and separate estate agents appointed to oversee the disposal of each. Many of the lands near Woking railway station and around Brookwood were sold, at much higher prices than the LNC disposals had previously fetched. No suitable agent could be found to oversee the sale of the third portion of LNC land, Hook Heath, and as a consequence Tubbs kept it under LNC control and oversaw its development himself. Over the 1890s the site was subdivided into plots for large detached houses, and a golf course was built to attract residents and visitors.
In August 1914, on the outbreak of the First World War, the LNC offered to donate to the War Office 1 acre (4,000 m<sup>2</sup>) of land "for the free interment of soldiers and sailors who have returned from the front wounded and may subsequently die". The offer was not taken up until 1917, when a section of the cemetery was set aside as Brookwood Military Cemetery, used for the burials of service personnel who died in the London District. In 1921 this area was sold to the Imperial War Graves Commission (later the Commonwealth War Graves Commission), and since then the military cemeteries have been administered and maintained by the IWGC/CWGC and its equivalents for other nations whose military are buried there. In September 1922 the LNC sold an area adjacent to the Military Cemetery to the US government. The LNC was hired by the US government to landscape this area and build a chapel, creating the American Military Cemetery (later the Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial), the only burial ground in Britain for US casualties of the First World War. Although built by the LNC, since 1923 the American Military Cemetery has been administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission. After the Second World War the military cemeteries were extended to include dedicated sections for many of the Allied nations, and in 1958 the Brookwood Memorial, commemorating 3,500 Commonwealth casualties of the Second World War with no known grave, was dedicated at the site. Between them, the military cemeteries occupy around 37 acres (150,000 m<sup>2</sup>) of the site.
## Closure of the London Necropolis Railway
On 13 April 1927 Cyril Tubbs died, after almost 40 years as surveyor, general manager and later a director of the LNC. Shortly afterwards, during meetings of the LNC's shareholders on 16 June and 14 July 1927, the words "National Mausoleum" were formally dropped from the LNC's name, the company being officially renamed the London Necropolis Company. On 28 December 1927 George Barratt, who had worked for the LNC for 63 years and been Superintendent of Brookwood Cemetery for 41 years, also died. Although the number of burials was gradually declining, it remained relatively steady. However, by this time mechanical hearses had begun to affect the numbers of people using the London Necropolis Railway. Trains still ran to the cemetery when there was demand, but the service which had previously operated almost every day was now generally running only around twice a week. By now the trees planted by the LNC in its early years of operations were mature, and Brookwood Cemetery was becoming a tourist attraction in its own right, often featuring in excursion guides of the 1920s and 1930s.
During the Second World War Waterloo station and the nearby Thames bridges were a significant target for bombing, and there were several near-misses on the station during the London Blitz of 1940–41. Although there were several interruptions to the Necropolis train service owing to enemy action elsewhere on the line, the Necropolis station was undamaged during the early stages of the bombing campaign. During the night of 16–17 April 1941, in one of the last major air raids on London, this good fortune came to an end. As bombs repeatedly fell on the Waterloo area, the rolling stock parked in the Necropolis siding was burned, and the railway arch connecting the main line to the Necropolis terminus was badly damaged. Multiple incendiary devices and high explosive bombs struck the central section of the terminus building. While the LNC's office building and the station platforms survived, the central section of the station was reduced to rubble. On 11 May 1941 the station was officially declared closed.
The Southern Railway (SR), which had absorbed the LSWR in 1923, offered the LNC the temporary use of Waterloo station to allow the Necropolis Railway service to be continued, but refused to allow the LNC to continue to sell cheap tickets to visitors travelling to and from the cemetery stations other than those involved in a funeral that day, meaning those visiting the cemetery had little reason to choose the LNC's irregular and infrequent trains to the cemetery stations over the SR's fast and frequent services to Brookwood. The LNC attempted to negotiate a deal by which genuine mourners could still travel cheaply to the cemetery on the 11.57 am service to Brookwood (the SR service closest to the LNC's traditional departure time), but the SR management (themselves under severe financial pressure owing to wartime constraints and damage) refused to entertain any compromise. In September 1945, following the end of hostilities, the directors of the LNC met to consider whether to rebuild the terminus and reopen the London Necropolis Railway. Although the main line from Waterloo to Brookwood had remained in use throughout the war and was in good condition, the branch line from Brookwood into the cemetery had been almost unused since the destruction of the London terminus. With the soil of the cemetery causing the branch to deteriorate even when it had been in use and regularly maintained, the branch line was in extremely poor condition.
Although Richard Broun had calculated that over its first century of operations the cemetery would have seen around five million burials at a rate of 50,000 per year, at the time the last train ran on 11 April 1941 only 203,041 people had been buried at Brookwood in almost 87 years of operations. Increased use of motorised road transport had damaged the profitability of the railway for the LNC, and faced with the costs of rebuilding the cemetery branch line, building a new London terminus and replacing the rolling stock damaged or destroyed in the air raid, the directors concluded that "past experience and present changed conditions made the running of the Necropolis private train obsolete". In mid-1946 the LNC formally informed the SR that the Westminster Bridge Road terminus would not be reopened.
The decision prompted complicated negotiations with the SR over the future of the LNC facilities in London. In December 1946 the directors of the two companies finally reached agreement. The railway-related portions of the LNC site (the waiting rooms, the caretaker's flat and the platforms themselves) would pass into the direct ownership of the SR, while the remaining surviving portions of the site (the office block on Westminster Bridge Road, the driveway and the ruined central portion of the site) would pass to the LNC to use or dispose of as they saw fit. The LNC sold the site to the British Humane Association in May 1947 for £21,000 (about £ in terms of 2023 consumer spending power), and the offices of the LNC were transferred to the Superintendent's Office at Brookwood. The SR continued to use the surviving sections of the track as occasional sidings into the 1950s, before clearing what remained of their section of the site.
While most of the LNC's business was now operated by road, an agreement on 13 May 1946 allowed the LNC to make use of SR services from Waterloo to Brookwood station for funerals, subject to the condition that should the service be heavily used the SR (British Railways after 1948) reserved the right to restrict the number of funeral parties on any given train. Although one of the LNC's hearse carriages had survived the bombing it is unlikely that this was ever used, and coffins were carried in the luggage space of the SR's coaches. Coffins would either be shipped to Brookwood ahead of the funeral party and transported by road to one of the mortuaries at the disused cemetery stations, or travel on the same SR train as the funeral party to Brookwood and be transported from Brookwood station to the burial site or chapel by road.
Although the LNC proposed to convert the cemetery branch line into a grand avenue running from Brookwood station through the cemetery, this never took place. The rails and sleepers of the branch were removed in around 1947, and the trackbed became a dirt road and footpath. The run-around loop and stub of the branch line west of Brookwood station remained operational as sidings, before being dismantled on 30 November 1964. After the closure of the branch line the buildings of the two cemetery stations remained open as refreshment kiosks, and were renamed North Bar and South Bar. On the retirement in 1956 of a Mr and Mrs Dendy, who operated North Bar from 1948 to 1956 and lived in the station apartment, North station was abandoned, and demolished in the 1960s owing to dry rot. South Bar continued to operate as a refreshment kiosk.
## End of LNC independence
After 1945 cremation, up to that time an uncommon practice, became increasingly popular in Britain. In 1946 the LNC obtained consent to build their own crematorium on a section of the Nonconformist cemetery which had been set aside for pauper burials, but chose not to proceed. Instead, in 1945 the LNC began the construction of the Glades of Remembrance, a wooded area dedicated to the burial of cremated remains. These were dedicated by Henry Campbell, Bishop of Guildford in 1950. Intentionally designed for informality, traditional gravestones and memorials were prohibited, and burials were marked only by small 2-to-3-inch (5.1 to 7.6 cm) stones.
Although at its founding the LNC had hoped to handle 50,000 burials per year and even without being granted a monopoly on London burials had planned for 10,000 per year, Brookwood Cemetery was never as popular as hoped. At the time of the railway's closure only 203,041 burials had been conducted, and the rate was steadily falling; on the LNC's 150th anniversary in November 1994, a total of 231,730 burials had been conducted. Even with the unusually large individual 9-by-4-foot (2.7 m × 1.2 m) grave sites offered by the LNC for even the cheapest burials, the site had been planned to accommodate 5,000,000 burials, and much of the land was empty.
Despite the decline in burials from an already low level, rising land values in the post war years meant that the LNC was a valuable and successful company. In the 1940s it bought out a number of other firms of funeral directors, particularly those catering for the expanding and prosperous suburbs of south west London within easy reach of Brookwood by road. The LNC continued to lobby the SR and its 1948 successor British Railways until the 1950s on the matter of cheap fares for visitors to the cemetery, but were unable to come to any agreement. In 1957 the Southern Region of British Railways considered allowing the LNC to sell discounted fares of 7s 6d (compared to the standard rate of 9s 4d) for return tickets for same-day travel from London to Brookwood and back. By this time most visitors to the cemetery were travelling by road. The LNC felt that the relatively minor difference between the fares would not be sufficient to attract visitors back to the railway, and the proposal was abandoned.
Owing to Henry Drummond's concerns in 1852 that the LNC was a front for land speculation, the sale of LNC-owned land for building had been expressly forbidden by the Act of Parliament establishing the LNC, and consequently much of the land not in use for burials remained undeveloped, aside from the land sold in the 1850s and 1860s, and the areas sold by Cyril Tubbs.
By the 1950s, with the area around Woking by this time heavily populated, rental income from the LNC's land holdings was an extremely valuable asset, and in May 1955 the Alliance Property Company launched a hostile takeover bid with the aim of using the cemetery's land for property development. The bid failed, but prompted the LNC to secure the passing of the London Necropolis Act 1956, allowing the sale of all remaining surplus land. A new company, the Brookwood Estates Realisation Company, was founded to oversee the disposal of the remaining unsold lands as well as the cemetery reserve, finally formally recognising that Brookwood Cemetery would never expand beyond its original boundaries.
The former South station was near the A322 road making it one of the most easily accessed parts of the cemetery once the railway had closed, and the land surrounding it was now redundant. As part of the London Necropolis Act 1956 the LNC obtained Parliamentary consent to convert the disused Anglican chapel of 1854 into a crematorium, using a newer chapel built by Cyril Tubbs in 1908–09 for funeral services and the station building for coffin storage and as a refreshment room for those attending cremations. Suffering cash flow problems and distracted by the hostile takeover bid, the LNC management never proceeded with the scheme.
Repeated takeover bids from various companies were unsuccessfully attempted in 1956 and 1957, until in December 1957 Alliance Property announced that it controlled a majority of the shares of the Brookwood Estates Realisation Company. In January 1959 Alliance Property announced the successful takeover of the London Necropolis Company itself, bringing over a century of independence to an end.
### After the takeover
Historically the LNC had invested much of its income from burials and fares, and used the dividends from these investments to pay for cemetery upkeep. Although Alliance Property kept the name "London Necropolis Company" for its funeral business, it was a property developer with no interest in the funeral industry, and saw little reason to spend large amounts maintaining the cemetery, proceeding with the proposed crematorium, or promoting new burials of bodies or cremated remains. The rising popularity of cremation meant the rate of burials was at a historic low, while the Victorian character of the cemetery had fallen out of fashion. The income from burials was insufficient to maintain the cemetery grounds, and the cemetery began to revert to wilderness. Over the course of the 1960s most undertaking work at Brookwood came to an end.
After Alliance Property's land sales, the London Necropolis Company had been reduced to Brookwood Cemetery itself and Frederick W. Paine, a Kingston-upon-Thames firm of funeral directors which had been bought by the LNC in 1947. In 1970 Alliance Property sold the LNC to Cornwall Property (Holdings) Ltd. The following year Cornwall Property sold it on to the Great Southern Group, the owners of Streatham Park Cemetery, South London Crematorium and a chain of funeral directors in central London.
The Great Southern Group dismantled much of what remained of the company. Frederick W. Paine was detached from the LNC, along with the specialist division overseeing the exhumation and relocation of existing burial grounds to allow property development on formerly consecrated sites. All that remained of the LNC was Brookwood Cemetery itself, by this time moribund and becoming heavily overgrown. Considered virtually worthless, Great Southern sold the LNC to property speculators Maximillian Investments in July 1973 for £400,000.
## Legacy
As Alliance Property and the Great Southern Group had between them stripped all assets other than the cemetery itself and development within the cemetery was prohibited, the LNC had little apparent value. However, Maximilian Investments secured passage of the Brookwood Cemetery Act 1975, authorising them to sell land within the operational area of the cemetery. The former Superintendent's office housing the LNC's offices, near the level crossing where the Necropolis Railway had passed between the northern and southern cemeteries, was sold for office development. Following the sale the offices of the LNC, renamed Brookwood Cemetery Ltd at this time, were moved into a small former caretaker's lodge. With little storage space in the new makeshift offices, the majority of the LNC's records were destroyed during the move. Tracts of land within the cemetery were sold to various religious groups and to wealthy families for use as private burial grounds, and a tract of unused land south of the Glades of Remembrance was sold to Woking Clay Pigeon Club. The masonry works remained operational until the early 1980s, although not under LNC management after the early 1960s, and were then converted into office buildings and named Stonemason's Court.
Although the Act of 1975 had specified that a portion of the profits from land sales be used to maintain the remaining cemetery, little restoration work was done and the cemetery continued to revert to wilderness. With the new owners of the land interested only in redeveloping those parts of the cemetery not currently in use, the cemetery itself sank further into neglect.
The last operators of the refreshment kiosk in the former South station retired in the late 1960s and from then on the station building was used as a cemetery storeroom. Around half the building was destroyed by fire in September 1972. The building was popular with railway and architectural enthusiasts as a distinctive piece of Victorian railway architecture, but despite a lobbying campaign to preserve the surviving sections of the station the remaining buildings (other than the platform itself) were demolished shortly afterwards. By the time of its demolition the "temporary" structure was 118 years old. In 1982 as part of the programme of land sales the station site, the two derelict Anglican chapels and five acres (20,000 m<sup>2</sup>) of land around it were sold to the St. Edward Brotherhood, an order of Russian Orthodox monks. The Brotherhood set about restoring the chapels for religious use. The original 1854 chapel is used as a visitor's centre and living quarters for the monastery, while the larger Anglican chapel built by Cyril Tubbs in 1908–09 immediately north of the station is now the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Edward the Martyr, and houses the relics and shrine of Edward the Martyr, king of England from 975–978. The main monastery has been built on the site of the former station building, while the platform itself remains intact and now marks the boundary of the monastic enclosure.
In March 1985 the company was bought by Ramadan Güney, whose family owned the cemetery until it was purchased by Woking Borough Council in December 2014. The Guney family embarked on a programme of building links with London's mosques to encourage new burials in the cemetery. Guney began a slow programme of clearing the overgrown sections of the cemetery and restoring significant memorials. The Guney family's efforts to attract new custom have been successful, to the extent that some of the lands sold off in the 1970s have now been repurchased by the cemetery. In June 1989 the cemetery was designated a Conservation Area, and was subsequently declared a Site of Special Scientific Interest. In 1992 the Brookwood Cemetery Society was formed to improve awareness of the cemetery; the Society holds open days, guided walks and other events, restores damaged memorials, and maintains and improves the signage within the cemetery. It is with these intentions that Woking Borough Council agreed at a Special Council Meeting on 24 November 2014 that it should secure the Cemetery by establishing Woking Necropolis and Mausoleum Limited, as a subsidiary within its Thameswey Group of companies.
While it was never as successful as planned, the London Necropolis Company had a significant impact on the funeral industry, and the principles established by the LNC influenced the design of many other cemeteries worldwide. The village of Brookwood has grown on the northern (non-cemetery) side of the LSWR railway line, focused on the 1864 railway station which remains heavily used both by commuters and by visitors to the cemetery. Brookwood Cemetery remains the largest cemetery in the United Kingdom and one of the largest in the world. Although not the world's only dedicated funeral railway line, the London Necropolis Railway was the first, the longest lasting and by far the best known. While the growth of the part of Surrey around the cemetery was heavily influenced by the LNC, some iron columns in Newnham Terrace SW1 which once supported the Necropolis Railway viaduct and the LNC's surviving office building at 121 Westminster Bridge Road are the only surviving London Necropolis Company structures in London itself.
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